


Misjudged

by ShastaFirecracker



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Administrative Assistant Martin Blackwood, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, F/M, Failure to Communicate, Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Friendship, Happy Ending, M/M, Martin's Mother's A+ Parenting, Multi, OCs - Freeform, Office Party, One Sided Internet Relationships, Other, RPF, RPF-Adjacent, Self-Worth Issues, The Magnus Archives (Podcast) as a Workplace Comedy, Twitch Gamer Jon, Workplace Relationship, holiday depression, imposter syndrome, parasocial relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27613502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: Martin's been a longtime listener of What the Ghost, so when Georgie gives a shoutout to her flatmate's Twitch channel during a Q&A, he checks it out - only to discover that her flatmate is also his most terrifying coworker at his new job. The first time they crossed paths, Jon yelled at him for incompetence. But on the streams, Martin sees an entirely different person - someone fun and relaxed, engaging and unfairly attractive. Over time, Martin begins to find that Jon buried inside his dour, awkward coworker. He also learns to live with the fact that his crush is painfully one-sided... or is it?
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 132
Kudos: 504
Collections: RaeLynn's Epic Rec List





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was a crack idea born of binging VODs of Jonny's Twitch streams and thinking to myself "imagine Jon J. Jarchivist saying some of this shit, lolol." Fortunately (unfortunately?) I have friends who are wonderfully enabling towards cracky fic ideas, and so I started writing and then it somehow managed to become a semi-serious treatment of a very silly premise.
> 
> Notes on this fic’s Jon: I’ve tagged for RPF(ish) because I did lift a bunch of real stream jokes and gave gamer-Jon approximately the same attitude and personality as IRL-gamer-Jonny. However, my interpretation of Jon here is still meant to reflect the fictional character - in a world without the Powers he has been significantly less traumatized, even back to his childhood with Mr. Spider just being an ordinary creepy children’s book. Jonny has stated that Jon in season 1 is as close as he ever came to being a self-insert, so the parallels are definitely strong. I hope that this doesn’t make Jon in this fic come across as off-puttingly OOC or like a complete RPF insert. Most of the IRL stream in-jokes are in chapter 1.
> 
> Notes on the AU: in this world, the Magnus Institute was still founded by Jonah Magnus, a wealthy eccentric fascinated by the supernatural, but the supernatural does not actually exist any more than it may or may not in our real world. The fear entities definitely don't exist here. At the present fic-time, a non-possessed James Wright is the Director, a non-war criminal Gertrude is the Head Archivist, and Jon, Tim, and Sasha are archival assistants. Martin picked a different lie for his CV, resulting in being hired in admin, not archives.
> 
> Content warning for canon-typical Martin loneliness & relationship with his mother. See end notes for more thorough content warning re:the parasocial angle.

-

“Oh my God!” Tim, as usual too loud, slid through the door of the office, brogues losing purchase on the hardwood. His heels left small curved scuff marks in the wood finish.

“Tim,” Sasha said, despairing.

Tim shut the door and scurried to Sasha's side, eyes wide with glee, phone held sideways. _“Sa_ -sha,” he said, teeth glinting.

She tried to look disapproving, but her mouth betrayed her with a smile. She didn't know what Tim had found, but it promised to be excellent. She put down the stack of folders she'd been returning to their filing locations.

With a few deft taps, Tim rewound the video he had been watching to the beginning, clicked up the volume, slung his arm around Sasha's shoulders, and bumped their heads together as he held his phone up close.

Sasha didn't play video games beyond a bit of Mario Party with friends and some time-wasters on her phone on the Tube, so she had no idea what she was looking at for the most part. It was very dark, almost everything rendered in blacks and grays and reds. In the bottom right corner of the screen was a small circle showing the real-life player – on webcam, she supposed, because the shot was very low quality and blurred. The player looked vaguely familiar, but it could have been any skinny brown man taking a sip from a mug, game controller in his other hand.

Until he put the mug down and sighed, taking up the controller again. “Fucking hell,” he said, and Sasha's mouth fell open in recognition. “Okay, chat, I hope you're ready to beat your brains out of your skulls against the brick wall of Father Laurence for another stream. How many deaths did I get up to last time?” He stared downward into nothingness for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I said dying is for chumps, I never said I wasn't a chump. Fuck you, chat. I will hit this flaming antler husband with a haunted wheel until he dies and that is that. Threaded ca – no, I will not hear your heresy another minute, you are all tiny... tiny children. I will never, in my life, chat. No! Okay, let's get back into this. The first ten don't count, I'm re-learning the timings.”

Sasha had clamped her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God, that's -”

Tim did not so much nod as fling his head up and down. Then he held his phone up and did a silent, fist-pumping victory dance. It was obvious he was trying very hard not to howl with laughter and attract undue attention from other offices nearby. “This is _Christmas,_ Sash,” he finally wheezed, brandishing the phone at her. “This is, is twenty birthdays at once, what do we even _do_ with this, it has to be _amazing!”_

Sasha bit her knuckles to keep in her giggles. She didn't particularly share Tim's enthusiasm for constantly ribbing coworkers, but she had to admit that she had never uncovered dirt on a coworker quite as delicious as aloof, aggravating, holier-than-thou archival assistant Jonathan-bloody-Sims's _Twitch gaming channel._

“You can't tell anyone else yet, Tim,” she said, grabbing him by the arms and staring him down. He nodded, lower lip bitten. “We've got to think about this.”

“Yes,” he said, and it came out a blissful sigh, like he was accepting a proposal. Not for the first time, Sasha's stomach fluttered in a way that was dreadfully inconvenient for her ongoing platonic-partners-in-crime style friendship with Tim 'easier than falling off a log' Stoker. She'd only resisted climbing that like a tree at first bloom of attraction because she knew Tim had things going with two other women and a bloke at the time, and she'd thought, _Well, I'm better than that._

Now that she knew for a fact that she was not better than that, the thought of having Tim for a fling – of getting his sweet cupid's bow, his bony wrists, his dramatically mussed hair, but losing this, this _everything else_... it left her feeling something akin to panic.

“When does he stream next?” Sasha asked, pushing all the rest of it into a dark closet in her mind. “We need ammunition.”

“I love you,” Tim told her, and Sasha tried not to hate him too much for it.

-

“Purchase orders for the last pay period,” said Edith, stacking reams of paper into Martin's outstretched hands. “These need to be processed by three o'clock, so do try to manage your time better, if you please. And Mr. Costich is due by sometime this afternoon, so I need you to receive the delivery – and let Mr. Costich know that I need to see him before next Thursday to discuss his vendor license. Yes?”

Martin awkwardly shifted the paperwork in his arms to hold it to his chest. “I'm fine, I've got it. Thank you.”

Edith frowned at him. “Are you feeling well, Mr. Blackwood?”

“I'm peachy,” Martin said, too brightly, knowing he was not selling it. He only hoped the sweat he could feel breaking out on his forehead wasn't actually visible. “I'll have it all done by three, I swear.”

Edith kept frowning at him but nodded. “Well, yes, it has to be. Could you pull the quarterly expenses if you get a moment, also? The end of the fiscal year is just around the corner. You've joined us at a rather exciting time of year.” Her mouth softened a bit. “Don't worry, young man, it won't always be such a pressure cooker. Once inventory audit is over for the year, you should find administration in the Magnus Institute quite relaxing.”

Martin sincerely doubted that, but he couldn't say anything. He had a feeling that Edith might be sympathetic in literally any other circumstance, but... well, not so much after he'd already lied his way through the door. As his direct supervisor, she'd probably be in dreadful trouble if Martin's lack of qualification was ever discovered. His stomach clenched with the idea that he needed to keep his secret deeply buried to protect her as well as himself.

Well, that was fine. He did best when he had someone to focus his caring towards who wasn't himself. He didn't care much for himself, to be honest.

Edith patted his elbow and left him at the desk in the rear of the open-plan admin office. This charade would be so much easier if Martin had a private place in which to panic about what to do, but only Edith had a private office. This large room had space for five employees, and it was currently fully staffed. Three of the desks formed a public-facing countertop, and two of the three ladies who worked there were engaged in consultations with visitors – public or academic, Martin wasn't sure. The other public relations woman was doing some kind of data entry so rapid it made Martin want to cry. The desk across from him, at the back of the room, was occupied by the only other coworker whose name he had managed to learn – Amy. She was lanky and dark-skinned and a little buck-toothed and shy, and Martin gravitated towards her as a potential ally in awkwardness.

Amy was neck-deep in numbers at the moment. Martin envied her. When he'd lied on his CV, he'd tried to keep it as close to the truth as possible – he'd been fond of maths in school before having to drop out, and he was quite good at keeping his own personal budget and managing his mother's accounts (even if she did resent every ounce of his help). The Magnus Institute had had two positions going spare, and he'd known the salary in either would be an extraordinary sight better than his current circumstances, but he'd had to take a gamble on which to apply for. Archival assistant had been appealing, because he supposed he wouldn't see too many people, and at least the whole position was about _not_ already knowing things and finding them out. But it required a degree of academic specialty (and an actual, you know, degree) which had ultimately scared Martin off because he didn't think he could convincingly lie about parapsychology or cryptoanthropology or whatnot, if pressed.

Maths, he'd decided, were not something you had to be smart to know about. You just had to be able to do them correctly. And he could do maths correctly all day. Surely no one could press him for specialist knowledge in the Accounting & Administration office that he couldn't suss out the right answer to by simply understanding numbers. So the lie on his CV was of a degree in accounting, because accounting was just doing a lot of sums, right?

Hah. Hah bloody hah.

God he wished he were doing sums. Amy and Edith did all the sums. Martin had not even considered that his new job as an administrative assistant _could_ involve interacting with the public until he'd first walked into this room and nearly had a heart attack at the row of customer-service smiles. Happily, that wasn't the case for him, but still – he was the newbie, and so he was the administrative equivalent of a rubbish collector. He got handed all the tidying-up of paperwork and loose ends and making phone calls and talking to vendors and processing files that everyone else was too busy or qualified to deal with.

And he _didn't know how to do any of it._

He set his messy stack of purchase orders and receipts down on his desk and steeled himself, gut churning. It was all right – he could do this. He'd gotten through one week so far without falling utterly on his face, and by now he had a firm grasp of the layout of the building and a more rudimentary grasp of the filing system. All he had to do was look casually through some cabinets, find old examples of this sort of paperwork, teach the system to himself, and make no mistakes. It was almost like he'd gotten the research position after all, except what he was researching was how to do his job.

Slowly but surely, Martin slogged through the purchase orders. He found a binder from the previous quarter and studied it hard, triple-referencing every single budget category code he wrote down to be sure he didn't botch any. After a while he even found that it made sense, and began to come to him intuitively. The library had ordered Dettol for cleaning, toilet tissue for the public washrooms, and sheets of large cardstock for upcoming autumn decorations. Cleaning and sanitation budget code 546; miscellaneous operational materials code 688. Write up every amount in triplicate, file each copy where it belonged, run photocopies of the receipts, notate the budget codes and processing dates on every one, add the copies to a new binder for reference if anything went missing in the post or if a vendor claimed they hadn't been paid. Then input all the payout amounts into the software, run off the checks, put together a bundle of mailing...

When one of the desk ladies tapped him on the shoulder he nearly jumped out of his skin, he'd gotten so deeply involved. He was almost finished with the last of the billing and feeling almost euphoric, especially since a glance at the clock told him he'd made it before three by a whole half hour. He'd skipped lunch, but that was fine. The little container of chicken salad would hold in the staff fridge until tomorrow's lunch, if he managed to get to it.

“Dan's on the line for you,” said the desk woman. God, Martin badly needed to learn her name.

“Who?” he asked, lost.

“Danilo Costich from the paper company?”

“Oh!” He scrambled up. “Right. He's... I'm receiving stuff...?”

She gave him a sympathetic smile. “You'll need a couple of forms and the little scanner thingie – here, I'll show you.”

Armed with a scanner thingie, forms that looked blessedly self-explanatory, and clear directions to the small loading bay outside Artifact Storage, Martin marched off to receive a shipment, feeling amazingly confident. Last week had been miserable, and he hadn't felt good about anything this morning, but somehow the day was going _amazingly_ well. He barely understood it but he didn't want to break the fragile bubble of good luck.

Danilo Costich was a nice, mustachioed, _loud_ man, skinny of frame but massive of arm, what with all the loading and unloading of heavy paper goods. The delivery went swimmingly and Dan was thrilled to tell Martin everything he knew about people in the Institute from over a decade of fulfilling paper goods orders. Martin's anxiety retreated so much that his stomach even fully unclenched and started grumbling about missing lunch. He ignored it ( _wouldn't hurt to miss a few meals anyway,_ thought that part of his mind that sounded like his mother, and which looked out through his eyes when he stood in front of a mirror) and pressed on with delivering the boxes of printer paper, loo roll, paper towels, and index cards to their appropriate departments.

Absolutely nothing went wrong, until it did.

He made it back to the admin office, flush with success, and when one of the desk ladies welcomed him back he even scrounged up the confidence to sheepishly (maybe charmingly?) admit that he hadn't caught her name. Nnedi, Indira, and Cassie were the three public-facing admin assistants, it turned out, and Martin repeated the names over and over in his head, fixing them in place while Cassie told off-color jokes and Indira talked shade about other departments.

The office door opened and a man about Martin's height but less than half his width shoved his way inside with a heavy armload of reams of white paper. “Who did this?” he demanded, interrupting Cassie's last joke.

Everyone stared at the intruder for a beat. “Um,” Martin said.

“Are you trying to ruin _everything?”_ the man said sharply, dropping the paper on Nnedi's desk with a window-rattling thud. “Can you not _read?”_

“Um?” Martin said, frightened.

Cassie rescued him with a roll of her eyes. “Calm down, Sims,” she said, leaning back in her chair. Martin blinked. He hadn't realized that not feeling chastised was an option. “What's the end of the world this time?”

“This is not what I ordered,” said 'Sims', huffing and crossing his arms. “This is bog standard print weight and it _isn't_ acid-free. The order I put in was for a bale of 9706 and a ream of 11108, archival-grade cotton rag – which is _there,_ Jesus Christ, don't put that in the _copier,_ are you insane -?” The man looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel, or at the least do a flying leap over the desk barrier to rescue his precious paper, which Martin had indeed laid next to the copy machine.

__Upon closer look Martin did see that there was a different string of numbers printed on the packaging of the paper, but it barely looked different from the other wrapped reams of printer paper lying around. Still, he stammered apologies, cowed by the force of the man's anger. “I'm, I'm so sorry, I'll – I didn't -” Martin grabbed up the special paper and held it out at arm's length as though the angry man might take his hand off along with it._ _

__“Jon, he's _new,”_ Nnedi cut in, sounding exasperated. “It's literally his second week here, unwedge that stick from your arse for a moment, can't you? Not everyone has a stationery fetish like you.”_ _

__Jon, apparently the name of the terrifying stranger, hugged the ream of paper to his chest. “This paper costs almost a pound per sheet,” he said waspishly, eyes gleaming. “I should think it would behoove anyone who works in accounting to care about _expense.”__ _

__“I didn't know,” Martin said helplessly, voice too small._ _

__Cassie heaved a dramatic sigh and stood to walk around the desks and clap Jon on the shoulder. “Come on, document gremlin, let's find your bloody 9706 and stop ruining everyone's day.” She steered the skinny man bodily towards the door, making him trip over his own foot before recovering. He said something else snippy, she rolled her eyes again, and then the door had closed behind them and Martin was left staring at the large stack of paper reams on Nnedi's desk through blurry eyes._ _

__Oh _no._ He blinked hard, trying desperately not to touch his face or sniff, anything not to be given away. He turned abruptly away from the paper and looked for something, anything else to occupy him, wringing one hand harshly with the other._ _

__Nnedi and Indira were on him at once, though, not fooled for a moment. “Oh, it's all right,” Indira said, small hand between Martin's shoulders. “He's a bit grim to deal with, but he's all bluster. You haven't done a thing wrong.”_ _

__Nnedi passed Martin a tissue, which was mortifying in itself. “I'll make us a cuppa,” she said. “What do you like?”_ _

__“Oh.” Martin shredded the tissue absently with his wringing. “Um. Bit of milk, I suppose.”_ _

__Nnedi left and Indira steered Martin over to his desk and patted his shoulder so he'd sit down. “You didn't eat, did you? I've got a bit of a secret stash here for the office, not those cheap sweets on the desks for visitors.” She went to one of the least accessible filing cabinets, opened the top drawer and dug around at the back until she emerged with a crinkly plastic bag of assorted chocolates._ _

__Martin was overwhelmed. If he hadn't known how to react to an angry stranger, he knew even less how to handle the coddling compassion of four new coworkers who all seemed to have judged him worthy of their affection. Even Amy popped up from her number-crunching and shyly let Martin know that she'd pulled the quarterly expenses for Edith, so he didn't have to._ _

__Tea and chocolate calmed his nerves significantly, until he was finally able to properly ask, “Who was that, anyway?”_ _

__Indira flung one leg over the other and leaned back in her chair, biting a fun-sized Milky Way in half. “Jon? Oh, he's the most senior of the archival assistants. Everyone's pretty sure he's been antsy for Gertrude – that's the head archivist – to retire so he can nab her spot, but she just keeps sticking around. I can't imagine Gertrude Robinson retiring, honestly.”_ _

__“She's been here for _fifty years,”_ Nnedi added._ _

__Cassie, who had returned from escorting Jon out of the office and zeroed in on the candy at once, swallowed her bite of chocolate. “Jon's been here at least nine, hasn't he?”_ _

__“Ten, I think,” said Nnedi. “He's definitely another lifer. It's like Ms. Robinson's the Queen and he's Charles.”_ _

__Cassie barked a laugh._ _

__“And he's... always... like that?” Martin asked nervously, taking another sip of tea. If so, he'd have to do everything he could to avoid the archives while working here. Although – he wouldn't mind _seeing_ the man again, if he didn't have to get yelled at – he'd like to get a less terrified glimpse at that sweep of dark hair and those cheekbones and -_ _

__Oh. Oh dear. Martin belatedly realized that the angry, shouty man had been awfully handsome. This was a problem._ _

__Cassie sighed dramatically. “Oh no, sometimes he can barely grate out a hello. He's a bit of a cipher, our Sims. Refuses to admit if he's a-spec -”_ _

__Nnedi clucked her tongue. “And that's not a lick of business of yours, Cassandra,” she said sharply._ _

__Cassie put her hands up defensively. “Fine, fine! I'm just saying -”_ _

__Nnedi glared._ _

__“He's not a people person, is all there is to say,” Indira cut in, shutting the other two down. “I've seen the hours he bills, I know he's here _all_ the time, so there's no way he has a life. His whole life is old, dead stories and taking care of documents. Which, you know.” She shrugged. “Is the whole business of the Institute, so it's not like he isn't right where he belongs.”_ _

__They kept chatting, but Martin retreated into blessed silence, just listening and humming an agreement whenever it felt called for. He finished his tea and nibbled a tiny Mars bar, watching the warm office full of laughing, smiling women, and wondering about the angry archivist. What a life spent mostly within these dark wood-paneled walls could even look like. Lonely, he imagined. Dreadfully lonely._ _

__Martin could relate._ _

__At five o'clock, he left work and caught the Circle line for the first leg of his hour commute. He didn't mind it, as he could pass the time doing the same sort of things he'd be doing in his flat, so it made little difference one way or the other. It wasn't like he had a party-filled night life to rush off to._ _

__There were no seats to be had in the after-work rush, so he braced his footing against the gentle bumping and swaying of the train's movement and hunched his shoulders near the car's back window, trying to make himself smaller so others could have more room. He fished out his earbuds and searched up _What the Ghost._ Not exactly original, was he, listening to the most-downloaded, most-well-known podcast about paranormal experiences in the whole country? But he'd tried some of the more niche ones, paranormal and true crime, and he didn't like them. Either they were too gory or they reveled in the fear of the victims or their hosts' voices grated on Martin's nerves. Georgie Barker wasn't like that. Georgie Barker had a calm, no-nonsense voice, empathetic but not saccharine, and she always chased hard facts and science while simultaneously listening with an open mind to everything her guests reported._ _

__Martin wasn't an idiot, he understood parasocial relationships. He knew Georgie Barker wasn't his friend. But, well... she sort of _sounded_ like one, and if that was all he could get, he'd take it._ _

__The new episode was listed and for a moment Martin was disappointed – it didn't have a number, didn't end with “Feat. [name of guest].” Not a regular episode, then. But on closer look, his heart leapt and he had to grin, because it was _finally_ the public release of her Patreon-only Q&A session from six months ago! He had gone in for her one-pound tier so he could read her blog posts, because it was all he could afford (though maybe after a few paychecks from Magnus he could revisit that?), but she usually made everything public after a while, because she always said she understood wealth disparity and she didn't want any of her listeners to be abandoned just because they couldn't afford something. (That was one of the sort of things she said that made Martin have to remind himself that he didn't know her and she wasn't his friend.)_ _

__He loaded it eagerly and reached up for a ceiling loop to hold while the train rattled along. Her sweet, welcoming voice washed through him like a balm and he stopped caring so much about the press of people, or the stale, sour smell of smokers' clothes and deodorant failing after a long workday and discreet burps from half-digested lunches._ _

__Georgie followed him through two train changes. He finally managed to get a seat on the Victoria. His mind had half wandered to where he might pick up dinner on the way to his flat (a real curry that wasn't a microwave meal sounded lovely) when Georgie said, “Oh, everyone wants more cameos from the Admiral. Well, it's not ideal when he wanders into the studio, I'm sure you understand! For one thing, he thinks the baffling looks like a whole, glorious room full of scratching post, and the stuff isn't exactly cheap to replace, so... Okay, okay, we can have an Admiral cameo. Hang on, let me get the – [rustling, thumping] – I'll give you an audio tour of my flat, how about that? Discover all the delightfully awful audio experiences that Craig makes sure no one ever hears. God, I'm sorry, Craig, this is about to be a mess._ _

__“[Door opening, footsteps. Suddenly the dead air of a soundproofed studio is crackly with overlapping noises – the hum of appliances, distant traffic, steps creaking loudly on an apparently wooden floor, birds, shouting children somewhere far away.]_ _

__“There's a park – it's like the whole school turns out in the afternoons, or the summer – and I don't even know _where_ the gulls come from, we're not near water – No, you don't get more clues than that, I know some of you lot would love to come round to mine if you knew where I lived, you pervs.” She said it with great fondness. “Admiral!” she called, lilting. “Aaadmiral!” More steps and more rustling. “I've got some treats, he likes the duck flavor ones – Addy!”_ _

__Abruptly a shout cut through her soft cat calls, followed by a muffled string of what sounded like curses. “Oh, Lord,” said Georgie. “Everyone wants to know if _my_ home is haunted, well. Here's the ghost I live with – flatmate who's never in, the mundane sort of ghost – [steps, door opening] – Hi, who's murdered you now? He's gaming. [Response muttered too low to make out.] Oh, you've got the Admiral! Traitor cat! Here – yeahhh, come get a treat, sweet boy, ooh there you are. Can you hear that? [Quiet for a moment, with something soft rustling against the mic, and then an extremely faint rumble.] He's a purring boy, in't he. One more treat. Don't bite my finger, rude lad. Say hi to the podcast? _Prrt? Mrrow?_ [More remote purring.] No, he isn't going to say hi, sorry. He only yells when he thinks he isn't being fed fast enough. He's a quiet lad. All right, go back to the lap you like better, you fickle little shit. Love you.”_ _

__Martin was so busy being charmed to pieces by the entire interaction that he nearly missed his stop. He hurried off the train at the last moment, stuffing his earbuds away in a pocket, and enjoyed the warm, fluffy feeling in his chest all the way to the shops and then to his home. The sun was nearly down when he stepped inside with a sigh, exhausted and hungry, driven near-mad by the smell of curry. He shuffled around making tea, changing into comfortable drawstring trousers, settling in for the evening, and then curled up on his small sofa with his food and his phone. He jumped back to re-listen to the Admiral bit again, because it was _so_ cute._ _

__“-a quiet lad. All right, go back to the lap you like better, you fickle little shit. Love you. [Muffled talking from a deep male voice.] Well, stop dying like a chump! That's my flatmate, everyone – you okay with this being in the Q &A? I can do you a shoutout if you like. [Muffled response.] Oh, shut it, you.” Georgie sounded fond. Her footsteps began to pick up pace again, clearly heading back to her home studio. “Right, well, check him on Twitch if you like, at eyeofthebeholder. He plays a lot of horror games, I'm sure the Venn diagram of paranormal interest and spooky video games must overlap somewhere – although I think he's more into it for the self-punishment, you know? He plays everything on nightmare hard mode. The man plays impossible Mario Maker levels for fun. Love him, but he's mad. So follow him at eyeofthebeholder! All one word. He's a riot, really. [A door opening; a sudden hush, and after the door closes, an almost swaddling silence.] Right, back to the questions. Where were we?”_ _

__Martin happily listened to the last few minutes while he ate dinner. Just as he was finishing the last bite, Georgie said her goodbyes and signed off until the next week's episode. Martin found himself alone – as he had always been, in reality – in his empty flat, with no company but an empty takeaway container and the sad plant in his windowsill._ _

__The familiar crushing feeling began in his shoulders and stomach. He stood quickly to dispose of his rubbish and putter around the kitchen cleaning his tea mug and doing any other chore he could find. There weren't many. His flat was neat as a pin – there was only so much cleaning one person could do, realistically, to combat the dreary fog of isolation and purposelessness._ _

__It was early evening yet, but he found himself – as he always did – torn between the option of merely going to bed early, or undertaking the monumental task of choosing a book or film to pass the time. It took so much work to claw himself towards caring, to embrace any mental or emotional attachment to a piece of fiction. The Sisyphean task of successfully making himself forget about his own loneliness for a couple of hours always ended the same, anyway – the moment the fantasy ended, reality came crashing back down harder than it would have if he hadn't bothered pushing it away in the first place._ _

__He wanted Georgie to still be talking to him. At least to hear her voice in the background, like a friend in the next room. But he'd just finished a re-listen to all of her old episodes, and starting again was too pathetic even for him._ _

__He hauled out his laptop and pulled up the internet. Browsed listlessly for a while, clinging to the faint feeling of connection that came with looking at social media updates from people he hadn't actually talked to in ten years. He looked at What the Ghost's instagram, but it hadn't updated since two days ago._ _

__Feeling rather grimy about it, Martin navigated to Twitch. The chance that Georgie would have anything whatsoever to do with her flatmate's gaming channel was almost nil. The remote possibility that he might catch the other side of that conversation from the Q &A tickled his brain – before he remembered that that had actually been recorded months ago. He sighed, but still typed in _eyeofthebeholder._ Maybe Georgie's flatmate also had a nice voice that he could listen to for a while, just leave running in the background. He knew nothing about proper video gaming. He only played Minecraft, and he wasn't even creative enough to do anything interesting with it._ _

__Thumbnails filled the screen, all spiky black and grey monsters with swords and fire. It looked like Georgie's flatmate had been playing Bloodborne for months and only recently moved on to Dark Souls III. Martin scrolled back through the VODs of Bloodborne, but couldn't guess which might overlap with Georgie's recording, so he arbitrarily clicked on one where the monster in the thumbnail looked a bit like a spider. He wasn't remotely afraid of spiders, so he figured that even if it was a scary game, he could get a feel for whether or not it would bother him without seeing any stuff he'd wish he hadn't._ _

__The video buffered. A game menu filled the screen. There was some muffled rustling, and a voice said, “Don't chew the controller cable! Bad cat.”_ _

__Martin stopped breathing._ _

__A circle appeared in the bottom corner of the video, showing a sofa. The person sitting on it was leaned forward, so Martin could only see the top of his head. Long black hair, pulled back in a messy bun._ _

__“Go bother your mum. All right, everything working? Sorry, chat, technical difficulties -”_ _

__The person on the sofa sat upright, face centered._ _

__“Right,” said Jonathan Sims, “welcome back to Yharnam, everyone. Shall we see what fashion options we picked up last week?”_ _

__Without thinking, Martin slammed his laptop shut._ _

__His heart was racing and he wasn't even sure why. Well, no – he knew why – it was that the sound of that voice took him back to this afternoon, right? Made him remember how panicked and ashamed he'd felt -_ _

__Except also – also – Martin sat there and tried to process some truly astronomical facts. The fact that he'd been listening to What the Ghost for almost four years, and that Georgie Barker held a place in his head somewhere near other unattainable, possibly-not-even-real celebrities, like... Beyonce. Or the Queen._ _

__And then the fact that he'd stumbled into the online life of a coworker he'd _just_ met, without even trying._ _

__And then the fact that he _worked_ with someone _who lived with Georgina Barker???__ _

__Martin's breath was coming too fast. He made a concerted effort to slow it down, flattening his hands on his computer and breathing out carefully. All right. All right. He was literally one human being removed from one of his podcast idols. And that one human being _hated_ him. So really nothing had changed, right? Jon Sims and Martin Blackwood did not know each other, not one bit. Working in the same building meant nothing, really. Jon had yelled at Martin and Martin had stammered maybe three words in reply. That was nothing._ _

__Martin let out a long breath, calming down. No, he was still anonymous and distant. He was just a fan of WTG and like all fans, he would never have any sort of contact with the creator of the thing he consumed. There was a great deal of comfort in not being known. God, how embarrassing would it be? And he'd probably never see Jon Sims again at work, anyway._ _

__Except that... he could see Jon Sims again. Right now. Hadn't he just thought this afternoon that he'd quite enjoy looking at Jon, if he didn't have to get yelled at to do so? Now he could look at Jon for hours and no one would even know._ _

__Well, that sounded creepy, but... it wasn't like he'd found Jon's camsite or whatever. (Martin flushed hot for even thinking that.)_ _

__The content was just... there. Public. Innocent, unrelated to work or even to Jon's personal details. It wasn't like Martin was stalking his social media, or doxxing him, or anything. Besides, this was all an _accident!_ This was pure random chance!_ _

__Taking a deep breath, Martin opened the computer again. The video had paused. Martin clicked play._ _

__“I got some good hats, I think. I'm feeling a new hat. Oh, let's go see how the fountain goblins are doing...”_ _

__Martin stared for far, far too long. After a while he realized he hadn't been following a word the man was saying, too absorbed in the incredulity and surreality of watching him sprawl back on a sofa, chatting about nothing while his fingers blurred on a game controller. Martin snapped back into reality a bit when Jon vehemently declared, “I _hate_ spiders,” voice brimming with vitriol – for a moment, Martin was reminded of this afternoon and his stomach turned. But then Jon said, with great relish, “So I am going to have _far_ too much fun murdering Rom the Vacuous Spider with a circular saw on a stick. Who doesn't want to fuck up a giant spider with a chainsaw lollipop? No one, that's who.”_ _

__Martin slid to the side on his sofa and laid down, laptop on his chest, and watched Jonathan Sims from work fuck up a giant spider with a chainsaw lollipop. It was pretty satisfying, actually – not because Martin loved to see spiders being exterminated with extreme prejudice, but because of the meticulous way Jon learned the timing of the attacks and ripostes and dodges and magic spells. He got killed easily a few times, then slowly began to get better, whittling away at the spider's health bar and getting it lower every time. After a while he wasn't getting hit at all, and was dancing around Rom's attacks as though the spider wasn't even there. The game was very cool to look at, as well, all flowing coats and spiky bits and eyes in strange places, the sort of aesthetic Martin thought of as too cool for someone as uncool as himself to be associated with._ _

__Throughout it all, Jon was amazingly funny. For some reason that was what took Martin aback the most – this clear proof that Jon Sims did, in fact, have a sense of humor. He was self-aware, sharp-tongued, quick-witted, and traded rapid barbs with his invisible chatroom of watchers, but none of it was... mean-spirited, Martin supposed. He was acerbic and snobby, but in a principled sort of way. He threw out hyperbole without a second thought but didn't take it badly when dramatic reversals of fortune chopped his legs out from under him. When he died in the game, he chuckled or cried out in mock anguish, but he clearly wasn't upset. In fact, the longer the stream went on, the more relaxed and pleased he seemed to get. If it were Martin going through a grueling grind of the same game-fight over and over, he was sure he'd be an anxious, miserable wreck, but obviously Jon found it soothing._ _

__Two hours slipped away before Martin even realized it. When Jon defeated Rom the Vacuous Spider and whooped with victory, Martin grinned with his infectious cheer. Jon ran around for a while more, chopping up low level monsters and talking animatedly about the lore of the game, before glancing off camera and saying, “Well, time to wrap up for the night, chat. I'm almost out of blood vials so I'll do some homework before next stream, but I promise I won't go near anything boss-like. Grinding in the lecture hall, most likely. No, I'm not going to stream it, no one wants to watch that. There's a really excellent boss coming up, I promise you'll prefer Castle Cainhurst to grinding for echoes. So barring complications I'll be back next Friday evening -” He rattled off details, mentioned subscribing, all the usual guff Martin was used to from What the Ghost and other podcasts._ _

__“Good night,” said Jon, looking at the camera – at Martin. “And may the good blood guide your way.” The video ended._ _

__Martin blinked against the sudden stillness. His immediate instinct was to click the next one, before he realized how late it had gotten. Jon looking him in the eyes and saying “good night” bounced around his mind a bit too much, and he swallowed._ _

__This... this could be a problem._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for at least the first 4 chapters of this fic: the sort of power imbalance inherent in parasocial relationships, i.e. the relationship that a content consumer may feel that they have formed with a content producer. The producer has no personal knowledge of the consumer, but the consumer may feel love or commitment to the producer directly, without the producer's knowledge/consent/reciprocation.
> 
> Mostly, Martin has a bad case of being star-struck by Georgie Barker, since he has listened to What the Ghost for many years. However Martin also watches a lot of Jon's gaming streams over several weeks without Jon knowing about it, which could constitute a sort of non consensual voyeurism. In case this is a dealbreaker for any readers, I will add here that Martin stops watching the streams out of guilt as he begins to form a real friendship with Jon, and the imbalance will be addressed before the end of the fic.
> 
> I liked it as a framing device for a TMA story because it is very Eye-like in attitude - a feeling of entitlement towards the consumption of other people as entertainment. But this is also a silly romcom, and my intent is not to get too uncomfortable with it! Let me know if I step on any toes, but otherwise, please enjoy!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor content warnings for Martin getting into thought spirals about financial insecurity and a problematic relationship with food, both stemming from his mother's emotional abuse.

Tim spun in his office chair, head lolled back. “Sashaaa,” he said. “How am I supposed to do anything with this? The man talked about emulsifiers for forty minutes straight while dying over and over to the same floppy mushroom monster. What am I supposed to do, pass him a jar of mayonnaise and yell 'gotcha'?”

“This vein is not as rich as I'd hoped,” Sasha agreed, sighing over her paperwork. “I mean, maybe we just leave him to his weird little obsessions in peace.”

Tim whined at the ceiling. “But he's _insufferable._ Can we not at least have some sort of 'have you tried not being a prick' intervention? Or buy him a chill game, maybe? I can't believe that all this nightmare mode crap he plays is good for his blood pressure.”

Sasha snorted and folded her arms over the files splayed out on her desk. She leaned towards Tim and said, “I think you spend an awful lot of time thinking about Jon Sims, is what I think. Has Timmy got a little crush?”

“What?” Tim snapped upright, looking monumentally affronted. “I have no such thing!”

Sasha made a childish pouty face at him. “Bless, Timmy's worried about the mean little man's health...”

“Pff, if he bursts a blood vessel from his own anal retention one of these days, I just hope I've got a front row view.”

Sasha laughed and shook her head at her paperwork. “You're an awful man, Stoker.”

“I have a reputation to uphold,” Tim said.

_“Yeah_ you do,” Sasha said, going back to sorting and stapling. “How's Andy in HR, then? Only you could get a thing going with an HR rep with some cheesy pickup line.” She loaded her voice with teasing to hide the twinge of jealousy.

Tim shifted in his seat, crossing his arms. “Nah, Andy's done. And Trish.”

Sasha furrowed her brow. “Wait, doesn't that leave you on your cold lonesome? Or is there a new conquest?”

Tim rolled his eyes. “I'm not like that, you know that.”

Sasha cringed at herself internally. She did know that Tim wasn't like that. He might be the Institute bicycle, but she'd never known him to be anything other than conscientious. Even when she'd surreptitiously questioned a couple of people she knew Tim to have slept with, they always laughed it off and said that it was just fun, and that they'd known what Tim was like, and that their feelings had never been hurt. Tim Stoker was nothing if not an ethical slut.

Sasha awkwardly covered with a mumbled apology and then a quick brainstorm. “You know,” she said, tilting her head, “I've got something that might be more interesting to keep an eye on than Sims' gamer life. You know the new guy in admin?”

Tim hummed. “Ginger? Hm... how to say nicely... big-boned?”

Sasha clucked her tongue and cast him a chastizing look. “Martin,” she said. “I was talking to Cassie the other day, and she said this guy was smitten from the first second he got a look at our favorite weirdo.”

“Wait, really?”

Sasha smirked. “Crush the size of a planet, Cassie said. Can't get a word out around Jon without sounding like a scratched record. To quote Cassie, 'it's sickening, and he thinks he's hiding it like a professional spy.'”

Tim's grin had grown wide. “Oh, Sash. You are so right, that's way more worth watching.”

Sasha stapled her last file with satisfied finality.

-

Martin went back and started the Bloodborne streams from the beginning.

Maybe it was ridiculous. Maybe it was invasive, he wasn't sure. But again – it was free and public on the internet, so how could it be invasive? If he enjoyed the cadence and timbre of Jon's voice, well, it was nobody else's business. And he liked the lore and visuals of the game a lot, too. He knew he'd never be able to play it – it would stress him out too much and he simply wasn't that good with hand-eye coordination – so watching someone else play it was a neat little way to get to see the story.

A week passed, and Martin faithfully listened to the new What the Ghost episode when it dropped, but WTG episodes were only forty minutes or so. He realized that cumulatively speaking, there was far, far more content of Jon Sims than of Georgie Barker out there online. His stomach squirmed with delight at the thought, looking forward to many engaging Tube rides and less-lonely evenings at home, when he could put Jon's stream on in the background and play a bit of Minecraft to pass the time. He'd started a new game and found himself in a snow biome, so he was enjoying passing his evenings in his cozy pixel cottage, building snow golems and ignoring the real world.

It didn't even make things too weird at work. If anything, it made Jon easier to face in person – knowing that he didn't _hate_ Martin or the Institute or anything, really, he just had a prickly personality. His acerbic, snarky relationship with his Twitch chat was as fond as it was rude. And Martin had noticed the obvious: that Jon was always, always more cheerful at the end of a stream than at the beginning. Work stressed him out, and the streams released that tension. Martin could completely relate.

Two weeks passed. Three. Martin delivered paper goods around the building again and again. He took special care to take the right things to the Archives, and he smiled at Jon whenever he spotted him. The man looked disgruntled and a little alarmed at the positive attention. This pleased Martin to no end.

One Friday afternoon, Martin was just boiling the kettle in the break room when footsteps shuffled in behind him. He turned to see who it was, and Jon froze in the doorway, clearly not expecting his presence.

“Hi,” Martin managed to say without tripping over his own tongue. Stammering was a bit of a problem where Jon was concerned, but Martin was pretty sure he hid it well.

“Ah,” said Jon. He edged into the room like Martin was a bomb he was trying not to set off. “I just. Forgot lunch. Was going to get -” He pointed uselessly at the fridge, then hurried over to it. Martin had a feeling that if he were paler, the red in his face would be very visible right now.

“H-how's things? Your day? I mean.” Martin cringed at himself.

Jon popped back out of the fridge with a small plastic tub filled with rice and something orange. His eyes flickered to the microwave on Martin's other side, clearly calculating how badly he wanted to get away and whether cold lunch was worth it. But after a beat, he walked over to the microwave after all. “Um, fine,” he mumbled, loosening the lid and setting the timer. “Long.”

“Thank God it's Friday?” Martin suggested, and cringed at himself again.

But Jon huffed a vague noise of agreement, and Martin's stomach fluttered. The kettle was almost done. Martin suddenly remembered he was picking a tea, and went back to rummaging in the tin in his hand.

“Martin,” Jon said suddenly, and Martin jerked, almost spilling a bunch of tea bags. Jon was looking at him – or rather, at the top of his left shoulder. “I wanted to say. I didn't, um. I'm sorry I was so – brusque. That one time. It wasn't you, it was – I'd had a bad day.”

“Oh,” Martin said dumbly, standing there with a packet of Lady Grey in hand, heart racing, head light. “That's – that's all right. Do you want a cup of tea?”

_What the hell,_ he thought to himself. _Brain stops working and all you can do is parrot your gran. 'That's nice, dear, want a cuppa?' Every time there was a problem, or a serious conversation, or an apology to be made, it was 'That's nice, dear, want a-'_

“Sure,” said Martin's big dumb gay crush, and Martin almost died. “Is there any chai left?”

“Yes,” Martin said breathily, then mentally smacked himself and cleared his throat. “Yeah, think so,” he said more normally, and dug around for the vanilla chai he'd just seen.

He replaced the tin, got out another mug, and set the teas to steep while Jon heated his lunch. Smelled like curry.

“Milk?” Martin squeaked, and had to clear his throat again.

The microwave dinged. “A little,” Jon said, pulling out his food and hissing at the heat. He dug a fork out of a drawer and stirred it. “I can get it, you don't need to...” he added, looking up at Martin and trailing off.

“No, I've got it!” Martin already had the milk in hand. Jon watched him awkwardly while he poured a careful amount into each mug. He took a bite of curry and made an abrupt noise, hand clapped over his mouth. Martin looked up, alarmed.

“Too hot,” Jon said, muffled. “'S fine.”

Martin bit the inside of his cheek to keep his stupid grin contained. “Oh no,” he said. “Well, careful with the tea.”

Jon gave him a glare that was as much embarrassment as anything, then swallowed with difficulty and came over to pick up his tea. “Thanks,” he mumbled. His shoulder almost touched Martin's. Martin held his breath.

When Jon was walking back out the door, Martin remembered to say, “Oh, n-no problem! Any time.”

Jon looked back and gave him an awkward little smile, and was gone.

Martin sank back against the countertop and let his tea steep far, far too long, so that it was lukewarm and bitter by the time he took a drink.

It tasted _amazing._

-

At the beginning of the next week, Martin got his second paycheck from the Institute. Just like the first, it caused him a minor heart attack because he'd never quite known how to process good news. He'd certainly never held a paystub with so many digits on it before. He immediately got a couple of bills paid and called up his mother's care home to talk about sending her some regular support money. The aide he talked to was kind and helpful, and at the end she asked if he wanted to be put through to his mother's room.

He hesitated. He felt good – it had been such a good weekend, and the money had eased off so many of his anxieties, and he felt like he'd just done his duty as a good son...

“You know, the dining room is about to open for dinner,” the aide said gently, and was that a note of understanding in her tone? She'd been there since Martin's mum had moved in almost a year ago. She would be familiar with Mrs. Blackwood by now. “She probably won't be in her room.”

Martin's stomach flipped. He knew the guilt would be bad either way, but it would be a little bit less bad if he said, “I suppose give it a go anyway, yeah.”

There were some clicks. Some ringing. Silence. Another click. The aide said, “Sorry, no answer. There's shepherd's pie and sticky toffee pudding tonight! I'm sure that's where she is.”

Martin let out a held breath. He _had_ tried, then. That was better than not trying, right? “Yeah, I'm sure,” he said, trying to keep the relief out of his tone. “That sounds good. Um, thank you so much for all your help.”

“You're welcome, love,” said the aide.

The guilt still came, but it was on this side of bearable. He could have left a message, asked if there was anything his mother needed in particular. He knew the answer she'd give, but it was still the right thing for a son to do. But he made himself push aside the lingering thoughts, pull up his bank account online, and stare at the amount still left in it. He worked through his personal budget for the next few weeks, double-checked the due dates of bills. Cautiously, like he might be caught red-handed for doing so, he shifted a bit more money into his food budget. He never bought the nice microwave meals, just the cheap ones. With this he could get a couple of nicer brand ones, maybe? It still wasn't like he had much time to cook at home, so it wasn't like he'd use the money to buy fancy steaks or anything...

He shook his head, trying to dispel his mother's voice. He could buy whatever he liked, damn it. He didn't answer to her anymore, and she'd never know if he spent _his own money_ on useless things, frivolities, excesses. She'd never be there to furrow her brow or pinch her lips at his meal choices. She'd never say the word calorie to his face ever again. She'd never -

Martin closed out his bank page and budget documents, pulled up Twitch, and searched for where he'd left off. His throat was tight, his sinuses tickling. He blinked hard, propped his computer on his knees, and listened to Jon welcome him back to the Hunter's Dream.

Jon was in strong repartee form with his chat in this stream. After a while, Martin started getting frustrated that he didn't know what conversations Jon was reacting and responding to. But access to the chat required an account and he couldn't afford - 

He couldn't... afford...

Wait.

Martin went to the kitchen and made himself a pack of instant ramen. He ate it slowly, thinking. About freedom. And frivolity.

Twenty minutes later he was subscribed to eyeofthebeholder's channel, under the username WhittingtonsCat.

-

_“How did I die?_ How did I just die, what – I keep falling off the ladder and I don't know – is it you? _Is it you?_ I don't even want to deal with you, just let me – STOP that, I swear to Christ, every time with the ladder! Is it the bell woman? Get back here!”

Martin was still giggling when he got off the Tube near work, drawing sidelong glances from other people. He hurriedly wiped tears of laughter away and tried to school himself into professional mode, but he was still grinning by the time he reached the Institute's front doors.

Distracted as he was, he ran straight into someone as soon as he was through the door. Things scattered and clanked across the lobby floor – files, a (thankfully closed) steel travel mug, Martin's phone. The man was half a head taller than him, wearing khakis and a blinding floral-print button-down, and was handsome in the kind of magazine-cover way that Martin had dismissed as permanently out of his league back in his own teens.

“Oh, God, sorry,” Martin stammered, immediately kneeling to gather papers. “Damn! I'm so sorry.”

“No worries!” said the other man cheerfully. He scooped up papers without bothering to sort them, tapping them into a stack on the tiles. “I wasn't looking either. Distracted by – oo, Youtube?” He had picked up Martin's phone, which hadn't yet gone to sleep. It had fallen screen-up and the shatterproof case appeared to have performed as advertised, to Martin's relief.

The man was looking a little too keenly at the screen. A game stream was up, paused, but the image of Jon in the bottom corner couldn't be bigger than a square centimeter on the tiny screen, so surely he was unrecognizable. Martin held out his hand for his phone and said a preemptive, “Thanks.” The man blinked and hurriedly handed the phone back.

They stood with their armfuls. The other man checked his travel mug for dents, then popped the opening on the lid and took a swig of what smelled like very strong coffee. “I've seen you around for a bit,” he said, pointing at Martin. “Martin, yeah? Admin?”

Martin flushed, tucking his phone into his pocket. “Sorry, I haven't learned everyone yet...”

“Tim! Tim Stoker.” He shifted his files into his elbow and his mug into his other hand, then stuck out his hand to shake. Martin took it. His palm was warm from the mug. He was really unfairly handsome, and it was making Martin paranoid. “I'm in the archives. Never get out of the basement, us lot, no wonder you don't see us. Jon's mentioned you, though!”

Martin felt his face blotch up immediately, and he tried to swallow past his mortification. “Yeah?” he squeaked.

Tim laughed. “Nothing bad. Said the requisition process has never been this smooth before. So, cheers!” Tim tipped his mug slightly. “He can be a real pain in all our asses when bureaucracy gets in his way.”

Martin bit the inside of his cheek to keep his smile hopefully normal-looking. “Oh! Good, um. Glad to help. He's all right, though,” he added compulsively. “I mean, I don't take it personally if he's prickly.”

Tim snorted. “Prickly is the nicest way to put it. Anyway, good to meet you officially, Martin.”

“Yeah! You too.”

Tim fired off a sloppy salute with his coffee mug, then turned and headed off in his original direction. Martin stood there chewing on his lip for a moment before smiling to himself and heading up the stairs towards the admin offices.

-

The brogues skidding through her office door had become a regular fixture of Sasha's life. The scuff marks were becoming worn into the hardwood.

Tim looked at her, wild-eyed with glee. “Sash,” he said, “you will _not_ believe this...”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not really any content warnings besides a bit more of Martin's body image issues. And a smidge of 'author is sad about not getting to have Halloween this year because pandemic and therefore must project a fun party she didn't get to go to.'
> 
> I am so weak against Everyone Around Star-Struck Idiots Ships Them trope, if you can't tell.

Two months after Martin started working at the Magnus Institute, he got his first official invite to a company holiday party. He also had his first minor panic attack over the idea of going to a company holiday party. Ultimately, though, his officemates were so excited for the damn thing that he couldn't come up with any convincing excuse to bow out of it. He had always been an atrocious liar, and the truth was that if he weren't at the office he'd be alone at home eating takeaway and binging internet videos, and that wasn't something he could admit out loud. His coworkers wouldn't let him get away with it for a second.

So he said yes, he'd be there, since each department had to report how many staff would be attending so that catering would have a number to work from. Which gave him two more weeks to think about what the hell he was going to wear.

It was a thornier question than it might have been, because this party was a Halloween do. Fancy dress. Martin had never done much for Halloween as a child, although he'd always wanted to – it looked like the most incredible fun, watching other kids running around the neighborhood, going mad for sweets and scares. His mum hadn't approved of all the candy, though, and with her lone salary there was no way she could afford costumes. Clothes that Martin would only wear once? No chance.

Very far back, Martin vaguely remembered his mum making an effort. She'd cut an old green t-shirt's hem and sleeves into raggedy ends to make a passable tunic, and then shaped construction paper into a classic Peter Pan hat. It wasn't like she was a cartoon villain – she was his mum, and she _did_ love him. She did. Martin remembered wearing the little Peter Pan costume, waving a stick for a sword, and feeling loved.

He didn't remember much else about that year. Maybe he'd gotten picked on for his shoddy costume, but if so, he didn't remember it. It was an unequivocally good memory, for him. But for whatever reason, his mum just sort of... stopped doing Halloween after that. Maybe because Martin hit a growth spurt that meant she already had to spend too much money to keep him in clothes that fit? One way or another, after the year of Peter Pan, Martin had not done anything for Halloween until he was an adult and Halloween was all about drinking instead of sweets.

And he had certainly never done a workplace fancy-dress party. The idea of going in something as shoddy as a cut-up t-shirt and construction paper hat made him feel literally nauseous, but he didn't know how to make anything better. And as good as his new salary was, it wasn't up to buying a whole outfit for one wear.

He'd become rather close with Amy over the two months he'd been in the office – the other three were more talkative, but Amy seemed to say more when she did speak. Their desks were close enough that Martin could quietly ask her how to do something he wasn't sure about without being overheard, and she would show him without judgment. She was smart and kind and he liked her smile. He definitely had a giant friend-crush on her – he wanted to tell her all kinds of deep, personal things that their friendship wasn't really up to yet. But it seemed to be getting there.

So he leaned over his desk one day and said, “Hey, so – what, um, what are Halloween dos like here? I mean, what should I go as?”

Amy looked up and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Oh, it's always fun. It's my favorite of the office parties – I'm so bad at Secret Santa, I always just buy a gift card. And no one's judgey about costumes.”

“Oh.” Martin let out a breath. “Okay. I just haven't... well, maybe you can tell, but I'm not a big party type.”

Amy laughed quietly. Nnedi was out for the day, and both Cassie and Indira were occupied with visiting students. “Struggling with a costume?” she asked sympathetically.

“Yeah,” Martin sighed.

“Well, I'm going as Lara Croft,” Amy said, flushing a bit. “Not, like, because it's sexy, I just like Tomb Raider. And shorts and a tank are easy, you know? I don't want to spend a bunch on it. Cassie always goes super-sexy – she likes to break every professional dress rule the moment she can get away with it. And Nnedi has been Hermione Granger every year I've been here, because she went to Harry Potter at Disney when it opened and bought _everything.”_

Martin laughed. “Wow, jealous.”

“Right? Only time I've even been out of the UK was going to Spain once when I was a kid. My parents thought driving up to see my mum's sister in Edinburgh every few months was plenty of vacation.”

Martin had never been out of the UK at all, nor had any extended family his mum would want to go see. But he didn't say so. “I guess I'll see what I can put together out of my closet,” he sighed, looking back down at his work.

Amy said, “You know, I'm always a bit jealous of the archive department at Halloween.”

Martin looked up, then reminded himself not to look too keen. Somehow he hadn't even thought about the fact that he might see Jon in a costume. It seemed like the sort of event Jon would simply not show up to.

“They always coordinate,” Amy sighed. “And it's always something hugely nerdy but somehow so good? And I think one of them has a connection in theatre, because the outfits are always top-tier.” She jerked her chin at the other desks. “This lot would never agree on something coordinated, though.”

Martin chewed his lip. “I could do something match-y with you,” he said. “I, um, I don't know anything about Tomb Raider, though.”

Amy blushed and equivocated about him not having to do that, that she hadn't been complaining, so on and so forth, but she had perked up with such delight at the mere suggestion that the more she told Martin not to, the more determined he became. He turned the subject to games and then films, and eventually they chatted the afternoon away about guilty pleasures – mostly big dumb exploding action movies.

And as he went home that evening, he had an idea.

-

Halloween fell on a Sunday that year, so the office party was not properly on the holiday, but rather on the Friday before. It was set to be a normal work day, with only the library closed while the public reading space was cleared and set up to be the party venue. The rest of the Institute would close half an hour early to give staff time to get ready.

However, almost no one had bothered to dress normally for work and only change for the party. Nnedi swept into the office in her Gryffindor robes first thing in the morning, hair teased up to an enormous cloud, twirling her wand like a baton. Cassie had on a scandalously short cocktail dress that looked like a Dalek. Indira arrived in a plain white tee with rolled cuffs, black jeans and braces, artfully windswept hair, the most intense smokey eye Martin had ever seen, and an unlit cigarette perched between her lips.

“Who the hell are you?” Nnedi demanded.

“Kristen Stewart,” Indira said, and slouched dramatically into her chair.

Amy, at least, must have been as self-conscious about riding the Tube in a costume as Martin had been, because she was in normal workday clothes. A small gym bag was half-hidden under her desk. Martin had his khaki trousers and off-white shirt on, but the rest of his look was shoved in his bulging satchel.

They were amazingly busy all day – tons of students came digging for stories of ghosts and hauntings that they could use to spice up their own holiday gatherings, and multiple tourism groups that did Haunted London types of tours were in their last-minute planning crunch. At noon, Martin was foisted off on the research department to help run endless photocopies and answer the phones, since there wasn't much admin to do and research were running ragged.

When the doors were finally locked at half four, Martin collapsed at his desk, too exhausted to consider the upcoming office party. Amy groaned along with him, laying her head on her paperwork. “I'm having a nap for dinner,” she told the inside of her elbow, muffled.

Martin rallied himself. “Come on,” he said. “Tea. You go change, I'll bring us a cuppa.”

But the break room was already crowded with costumed, chattering employees, and Martin was too skittish to shove through to commandeer use of the kettle. He squeezed and 'excuse me'd his way to the fridge and fetched a couple of ginger ales instead. If Amy was anything like as nervous as he was around crowds, her stomach would need settling too.

The admin office was empty and silent when Martin got back. He sighed with temporary relief, sat at his desk and sipped his soda, willing the butterflies in his belly to calm down. He reached down to his satchel and tugged out his last bits of costume, fighting the flush of unwarranted embarassment – everyone else was fully dolled up, so why did he feel like such an idiot, such an imposter? It was just a hat, he told himself, staring at the offending object. And a belt, with a toy gun and a fake whip. It looked so silly. God, he was such an embarassment to be around, he should just shove this all in the bin and go home – no one would miss him -

Amy shuffled into the office, tugging awkwardly at the hems of her too-short shorts. “Oh, God,” she groaned, and when she looked up her eyes locked with Martin's. He had never shared such an intense empathy with another human as in that moment. It was enough to steel his nerves, knowing he wasn't alone.

Amy buried her face in her hands and made a noise of despair. “This was so stupid,” she said, muffled. “I look like such a twat.”

Martin stood and jammed the cheap hat on his flyaway hair. “No, come on,” he said. “We look amazing. We're Fat Indiana Jones and Indian Lara Croft, and we mean business.”

Amy snorted a giggle and dropped her hands. “Oh, don't talk about yourself like that,” she chastised, but in a kind way.

Martin wrangled his silly-looking belt on and puffed his middle out with emphasis. “Harrison Ford, _plus.”_

She snickered again and shook her head. Her long black braid swished. “You look great,” she insisted.

“You look better,” he retorted.

She gave a heavy sigh but finally accepted the compliment. “We should head to the library,” she said, holding out an arm for him to loop through hers. “Come on, sexy professor.”

Martin stumbled on his own feet taking a step towards her. He dutifully linked arms and started walking with her, but coughed an uncomfortable laugh at the same time, glancing away. “Oh, um, I, ah.” He swallowed hard. “I'm, I'm – I'd be really flattered, I mean, Amy, but I'm gay - ?” He bit off into an embarrassed squeak.

“Oh, God, I know!” Amy leaned into his side and looked up at him. “Sorry! I didn't mean it to come out all – flirty. No, I know, yeah!”

“Oh,” Martin said, still horribly blushing. “How? I never said.”

Amy groaned with her own embarrassment. “Well, I guess I shouldn't have assumed – you could've been bi, but – you know the way you look at Jon Sims, right?”

Martin tripped over his own feet again. “Do I?” he squeaked.

“Oh, Martin,” Amy said, almost despairingly.

“Go-o-od,” Martin intoned, squeezing his eyes shut.

“I do get it,” she said sympathetically. “I mean, _speaking_ of sexy professor.”

“Don't!”

Amy grinned at him.

Martin let out a defeated sigh. “How obvious am I?”

“So, so very.”

“Shit.”

“It's fine,” Amy said. “Everyone thinks it's cute.”

“Everyone thinks about it, do they?”

“Well,” Amy amended, “everyone thinks you ought to _do_ something.”

“What!” Martin nearly stopped dead in the hallway. This time Amy stumbled.

“I mean,” she said, tugging his arm, “he's single! Why not?”

Martin just shook his head mutely, aggressively, terrified words stuck in his throat.

Amy sighed at him. “I won't push,” she said, backing down gracefully. “And I won't gossip with anyone else. But you ought to think about it, yeah? Just letting it sit around festering won't do anyone any good.”

“Festering? _Fest_ ering!”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Amy said good-naturedly, holding his arm and dragging him onward.  
The library, when they arrived, had been eaten alive by a Halloween shop. The entry doorway was absolutely chocka with paper bats and sparkly orange and black tinsel, and the interior was only more intense. Elaborate specters made of artfully shredded tissue paper hung from the ceiling, looking like they were flying through the stacks. Some had even been cut in half and placed cleverly to make them look like they were passing through bookshelves. Books had been piled precariously high in corners, Ghostbusters-style, and the ordinary reading-room furniture had been stacked as though by a poltergeist. There were enough fairy lights to blind someone, fake cobweb that seemed to appear out of nowhere around every corner, Monster Mash playing from the PA system, and _people._ So terribly many people.

And yet, Martin had to admit after a few minutes, it wasn't all that bad. He felt downright plain among the wild assortment of costumes. He tipped his hat back to see better as he waded into the throng of the party proper, and with a little startlement he realized that he recognized more faces than he didn't, and could even pin names to a lot of them. He had been so focused on keeping his head down and learning the job he wasn't qualified for, that he hadn't fully noticed that he was also settling in socially. He'd still sort of thought of “The Institute” as a monolith of strangers he'd never meet, doing data analysis he'd never understand... but he knew these people now, knew who had kids and who had health problems, knew who he liked and who he'd rather avoid. He knew Sheila had recently divorced and that Ed would hopefully steer her away from drinking too much wine. He knew Dani had a weird, niche interest in the First and Second Crusades, while Sam had an alarmingly intense fascination with plagues. He knew Gertrude would never retire, and that Sasha was her protege...

He had just turned away from the drinks table with a fresh cup of punch when he spotted them. Archives. Well, he spotted Gertrude, anyway – she was dressed in a white, short-sleeved, 1950's-style dress that he thought for a moment was supposed to be an old nurse's uniform, until he noticed the insane contraption serving as her hair decoration. He squinted at it, baffled. Big rectangles of shiny foil, pointy bits sticking out, something in the middle that looked like a... monocle? Near Gertrude stood the young woman Martin recognized as Sasha James, in an incredibly 60's horizontal-striped dress, her long hair ironed stick-straight. Bizarrely, she was holding what looked to be a coat rack next to her, like a staff.

Martin nudged Amy, who nearly spilled her punch. “I thought you said Archives always coordinates?”

Amy went up on tiptoe to peer across the room to where he was looking. “Yeah,” she said. “Oh, who are they? Sasha is ringing a bell. Stoker usually is the dead giveaway -”

As if on cue, a streak of silver darted through the main entry and the general hubbub was cut through with a jovial bellow of, “Fear not, citizens of Earth! Take me to your leader!”

Martin did a double take at the sight of Tim Stoker in a lot of silver body paint and not a lot of anything else.

Across the room, Sasha and Gertrude both turned to look at their coworker, the latter looking as long-suffering as the former did gleeful. The woman next to them turned also – she'd had her back to Martin, had been saying something to Gertrude, so all he'd seen was her long, dark hair in an elaborate bun, and the back of her dark blue dress -

Martin choked on a mouthful of punch when the gowned figure turned to reveal the profile of Jon Sims, dressed to the nines in a Victorian gown of navy blue with a neckline thickly wrought with lace. As he moved, the fairy lights had a chance to reflect off of the sparkling gems all over his dress, and with a jolt Martin realized they were set in constellations. His hair had been piled up into a bun but left loose enough that a couple of strands still drifted down to frame his face – and with the way his hair was up, and the cut of the gown, the sweeping curve of his neck was simply _unfair._

Amy elbowed him hard enough to make him yelp, breaking his fixation. “Astronomy!” she declared proudly, over the rising noise of partying people and goofy Halloween music.

“Wha?” Martin asked stupidly.

“Women in astronomy,” Amy half-yelled. “Margaret Hamilton, and, um – something, someone Roman, who did the Hubble telescope? In her hair, it's the Hubble.”

Martin glanced back. With a second to process, he realized she was right – Gertrude's headpiece was a miniature Hubble Space Telescope. Tim Stoker had invaded their space now, and Gertrude was trying to ward him away from getting any silver body paint on her clothes. Martin realized that Tim had on a headband with googly eyestalks, and was brandishing a toy ray gun.

“Looks like Stoker's the alien,” Amy laughed.

“Who's Jon?” Martin hollered, mesmerized once again by the sight of Jon apparently yelling at Tim. They were too far away to hear.

“Dunno! You should go ask!”

“What?!”

Amy shoved him away, towards the archive staff.

Martin made it halfway across the room before he chickened out. He saw Phillip, the janitor, and hurriedly pretended he'd been coming over to talk to him in the first place, boring as the man was. Phil seemed thrilled to be noticed and spent an earnest fifteen minutes telling Martin about his nieces and nephews, and how little he understood anything they got up to. Martin focused on him and did not, did _not,_ glance over at the archive staff every now and then. That would be rude.

Eventually Sheila came over and Martin managed to escape, only to be caught up in this conversation or that, then to realize he was hungry and wander over to the food table for a little plate of cheeses and cakes. 'Thriller' came on the PA and a bunch of tipsy people (including – and possibly led by – Tim Stoker) began doing the dance. Martin backed hurriedly away to the edges of the room, avoiding getting dragged in at all costs. Then a flash of blue caught his eye and he saw Sasha, prop coat rack long abandoned, tugging a clearly resisting Jon towards the dance floor.

Martin watched, jaw agape, as Jon finally gave up and joined in. His dancing was passable and he clearly knew the steps, and after half a minute Martin even saw him beginning to grin. He kept having to pull his skirts up with one hand to avoid tripping on them. Martin's bones seemed to have all turned to jelly, and his brain could produce nothing but _oh Christ he's so precious, he's so pretty, help, help,_ over and over like a broken record.

In his daze, Martin barely noticed the young man sidling up to stand next to him. He only blinked and shifted his attention when he got a big whiff of overly sweet smoke, and coughed.

“Hey,” said the young man, whom Martin vaguely recognized from Research.

“Hi?” Martin coughed again, politely this time, and held out a hand. “Martin Blackwood, sorry -”

“Elias,” he said, and shook Martin's hand a little too long. Martin peered through the dim fairy lighting and realized his eyes were quite bloodshot. “Great party, right?”

“Uh, yeah -”

“Hey, if you see Dr. Wright, would you tell him I had to head out? Something came up.”

“Uh – sure? -”

“Yeah, he uh,” Elias coughed, “wanted to talk about, uh, whatever. But I gotta go.”

Martin had a feeling the only thing the Director of the Institute wanted to talk to a stoned intern about was a potential firing. He felt a bit bad for the kid.

“Anyway,” Elias said breezily. “Gotta head out. Places to do, people to be, right? Nice to meet you, Mark...” And then he'd dodged away towards an exit before Martin could say anything.

“Wow,” Martin told nobody.

“Fuck!” yelped a nearby panicky voice.

Martin nearly jumped out of his skin. He spun to see that Jon Sims – Martin's heart skipped a stupid beat – was attempting to bat away a bit of decorative cobweb that had caught on his hair and lace collar. He was swiping wildly, making it worse, and clearly looked more frightened than was warranted.

“Jon?” Martin said, like an idiot.

“Ah, goddamn -”

A memory flashed of Jon's voice, filled with genuine viciousness, saying, “I _hate_ spiders.” And Martin understood. He hurried over without thinking, dropping his empty plate on a nearby stack of books, and reached out to the tangle around Jon's head.

“Hey, hey, let me help,” he said, plucking cotton strands. Jon kept moving and Martin said, “Stop that, just let me – it's stuck on a bobby pin I think -”

Jon stilled, saying, “I hate these – sorry, it's just, ah, tickling my neck -”

“Got it, got it,” Martin said, finally untangling the core of the issue and pulling the mass of web off Jon's shoulder. A few fibers kept clinging, and Jon immediately winced and started plucking them, rubbing his neck and shuddering. “You all right?” Martin asked, wadding up the decoration and looking for somewhere to put it. He ended up setting the ball on his empty plate. It looked like a cocoon.

“Yeah,” Jon said quickly, scratching under his ear and pulling another fiber out of his hair. “Yeah, I'm okay.” He blinked and seemed to notice Martin for the first time. “Thank you, I didn't mean to...”

“No problem!” Martin blurted too fast and probably too loud. “No problem at all, I mean, I don't hate spiders like -” He caught himself. “Like a lot of people,” he finished, voice too high.

“Fuck, I hate them,” Jon said, shuddering again. “Even fake ones. I feel like I can still feel little legs.” He winced and put both hands to his neck, rubbing vigorously.

“I'm sorry,” Martin said.

“No, it's fine now! Thanks, again. I'm fine.” Jon took a deliberately deep breath, calming down. He really looked at Martin for the first time. “Oh, that's good,” he said, quirking a smile.

“What?” Martin glanced down at himself.

“Indiana Jones.”

“Oh!” Martin's stomach did a somersault. “Right, I forgot. Hah!”

“Picking spiders off me, just like the, um, in the film? Good job.”

“Oh my God,” Martin said, dumbfounded. “You're right. Does that make you Marian?”

Jon laughed. Martin stared. His breath smelled very faintly of alcohol, and Martin realized he must have drunk just enough to make him a little more easy, a little more relaxed. Martin recognized the man from the internet in this Jon, disheveled and laughing, joking and prodding. This Jon was so irresistable, Martin felt like he might die.

“Who _are_ you?” Martin blurted.

“What?”

“Oh, costume!” Martin cringed at himself. “I meant costume.”

Jon laughed again, more sheepishly this time. “Annie Jump Cannon,” he said, swishing his skirts a bit. “The founder of stellar classification. She catalogued stars.”

“Oh, wow,” Martin said, eyes wide. “The dress is amazing – I mean, you're gorgeous! I mean, the dress is gorgeous – it's really – oh God, you know what I mean.” He was babbling.

Jon smiled at him, looking genuinely pleased. “Thanks,” he said. “A friend sewed it but I put the stars on, accurately and all that.” He sounded a bit embarrassed.

“That's amazing,” Martin insisted urgently, eyes wide. “Wow, I just, erm... I bought a hat.”

Jon burst out laughing again and this time Martin had to join him, it was so infectious. Jon said he was parched, and Martin stammered out something about punch, and together they made their way across the room. They stopped and talked to a few other people. They talked to each other. Punch in hand, Jon stuck by Martin and talked animatedly about the rest of his department's costumes - Margaret Hamilton, who wrote the code that took humankind to the moon, and Nancy Roman, who first proposed the concept of a space telescope and was instrumental in the creation of Hubble.

“But of course then we have _Tim,”_ Jon said, rolling his eyes.

Martin giggled. Tim's silver paint had been flaking off all evening, leaving him looking more and more essentially naked.

“Sasha's besotted with him,” Jon declared. “And the only one who doesn't know it is Tim, apparently.”

Martin coughed on his punch. “Is that right,” he said, staring at Jon.

Jon, oblivious, drained his cup. “Are there any cakes left?” He peered around towards the snack table.

The rest of the party passed in a happy blur. At some point Martin caught a glimpse of Amy and Indira talking across the room, and Amy saw him looking and gave him a huge double thumbs up while Indira pointed at Jon and silently, exaggeratedly mouthed “get it!” Martin waved them desperately away, slicing across his throat with his hand, then turning the motion into an awkward neck scratch when Jon turned to look at him. But besides nosy friends, Martin hadn't had such a good time in – God, years, probably. A tipsy Jon was affable and talkative, full of snarky wit and stories from his dozen years at the Institute. Martin finally found himself able to relax and talk back without stammering, able to get over his crush long enough to treat Jon like a friend. And maybe they _were_ friends, now, or at least becoming so.

When Jon tripped on his own dress and staggered into Martin's side, laughing, Martin finally realized the man had crept past the 'tipsy' line and into 'blitzed' territory. There were bottles of liquor available to spike your own punch as desired, and Martin realized that Jon had probably been running on about half-punch, half-rum for at least an hour. Martin had only gone in for a couple of splashes of vodka, aware that he needed to be able to get himself home.

“Hey, hey,” Martin laughed, holding a swaying, giggly Jon upright. “Maybe you should slow down. Do you have a way home?”

Jon grinned up at him and looped his arms around Martin's neck, gazing up into his face. Martin felt himself going hot and blamed the pittance of vodka. “You have freckles,” Jon stated firmly, staring at Martin's nose.

“I do,” Martin said patiently. “Is someone picking you up, Jon?”

He frowned. “I bet you could.” He dropped his hands to Martin's upper arms and patted them. “Yeah, you definitely could.”

Martin groaned. “No, to go _home.”_

“Yes yes yes,” Jon said impatiently. “Flatmate, when I test her. _Text._ Teck-sst. I'm fine!”

“It's pretty late, you should give her a shout.”

Jon dropped his hands to his dress and started patting himself down with no coordination at all. “'S got a pocket,” he told Martin very seriously. “Said to Georgie, 's gotta have a pocket, an' she said who d'you think I am, not a woman who -” He hiccuped and froze for a moment, holding a fist to his mouth. “Ugh. A um, a woman who knows all dresses need pockets? I _love_ her. Where's -” He started dragging up swaths of fabric, squishing handfuls of material to try to find the shape of a phone.

Martin's heart was hammering. He loved Georgie. Oh, okay, well – that made sense, they lived together. Georgie was out as bi, although she'd only ever mentioned a girlfriend on What The Ghost. Martin thought she was still with said girlfriend, but maybe they'd split. Or – maybe Jon was just in love with Georgie like Martin was in love with Jon – maybe they were all just this stupid, pointless chain of unrequited yearning -

Jon finally wrestled his phone out of the alleged pocket and held it up triumphantly. “There! What ws'I doing?” he demanded of Martin, glaring with a furrowed brow.

“Calling Georgie,” Martin said, hoping Jon couldn't hear that he'd suddenly gone a bit hoarse.

Jon lit up. “I love Georgie,” he said again, and looked at his phone. “W'used to date, d'you know? In uni.” He laughed. “Stupid – idiot uni kids – she'sss'm best friend – besides the cat. Cat's m'best friend.” He got the phone dialed somehow and mashed it against his face.

Martin needed to sit down. Jon, oblivious to the emotional roller coaster he'd just sent Martin on, got through to his flatmate and best friend and started drunkenly telling her how much he loved her. Martin heard a faint, tinny voice responding, but was barely registering anything that was being said, until Jon said his name. Martin snapped back into focus.

“-ahtin, he's great, he's right here! I love him. He's got freckles. Name fun to say. Mahtin. Mahhhhtin. Talk to – yes, yeah, here -”

And then Martin was being handed a phone, on the other end of which was _Georgie fucking Barker._

“Hi! Is this Martin-from-work?”

“Oh God!” Martin yelped, then clapped his hand over his mouth.

“Sorry?”

“I – yes, yes it is – I'm so sorry, I um, I listen to uh, I've been a fan of yours for – a while.”

“What? Oh! Shit, wow.” Georgie Barker laughed. It sounded sheepish and kind. Martin was near tears. “Okay, that's great – I'm flattered. But, um, is Jon all right?”

Martin nodded furiously, then realized she couldn't see him. “Yes! Yes yes, he's just had a lot of punch. Rum, I mean. In the punch. I said he should call his ride.”

“Oh, good,” she said, sounding relieved. “Glad you're looking out for him. Usually it's Sasha who manages him if he gets too far gone. Not that he drinks often, it's just that he's a, um... to put it nicely, an affectionate drunk?”

Jon was now mostly hanging off Martin's arm, cuddled into his side. Martin swallowed. “So I see,” he said.

“Bless him,” Georgie said fondly. “All right, I'll head in that direction, then. Be there to pick him up in half an hour or so. Do you think you could talk him into drinking some water?”

“Sure!”

“Thanks! See you in a bit.”

Martin ended the call and handed Jon his phone back. He said, “I can't believe you live with Georgie Barker.”

“I know,” Jon said cheerfully, now struggling once again to find his mysterious pocket. “She's so good.”

“I just meant -”

“She has a podcast,” Jon said, hauling up armfuls of skirt again.

“I know!” Martin stopped Jon before he could get the skirt hiked up to public-decency-violating levels. “I listen to it! Hey, here's the pocket.”

Jon triumphantly returned his phone to his dress pocket and blew wayward hair out of his eyes. _“You're_ so good,” he said. “Is there punch?”

“There's water,” Martin told him firmly, and Jon happily let himself be led to the end of the table where there were still some bottled waters scattered around. They were no longer fridge-cold, but as soon as Jon got hold of a lukewarm bottle, he chugged most of it.

After a quick gasp for breath, a flushed and lightly sweaty Jon Sims stared into the middle distance for a long moment, then stated, as though only now realizing it: “I am so drunk.”

Martin doubled over laughing.

The party was winding down, late as it had gotten. Several people stumbled out the front doors together, chattering about a pub crawl. A few library staff were already surreptitiously trying to clean. The music had run out of seasonal bops and turned into some kind of basic house stuff, thumpy and tuneless. Martin made Jon take a second bottle of water, and drank one himself while he led Jon out the front doors and leaned him against the handrail by the entry steps.

“Ugh,” Jon said to the night air, leaning back to look up at the sky. “God. I haven't gotten this drunk in. Dunno.” He swigged water. “Been a while.” He looked down and furrowed his brow at Martin. “Can _you_ get home?”

Martin flushed at the sudden direct attention. “Yeah, of course!” he said, stuffing his hand in his pocket and taking a drink of water. “Tube stop isn't that far -” Then he stopped himself and looked around. “Oh, what time is it? Late service is probably... well, I can get a cab. I can afford a cab!” This last was mostly to himself, in wonderment.

“Where, uh, how far s'it? Give you a lift?”

“Oh, no, don't worry about it! I live out towards Morden, it's so far.”

Jon made a disgruntled sound.

“Just go home and get some sleep, all right? I'll be fine, I'll see you Monday.”

Jon downright pouted. Martin's heart skipped another beat.

The front doors banged open and the thoroughly tangled pair of Sasha and Tim came stumbling outside to join them on the steps, Tim slouched over Sasha's shoulders, shedding silver all over her outfit. His bobbly eyestalks were crooked.

“D'you need help?” Martin asked Sasha.

She rolled her eyes and hiked Tim's arms more firmly over her shoulders. She was wearing him like a backpack. “I've got it, but thanks.”

“'M a coat!” Tim mumbled into her hair. “She's'm' coat rack.”

“Going to get you in bed, big boy.”

“Pub?”

“Bed!”

“Pub!”

Sasha gave a long-suffering groan and started towards the curb, lifting up Tim's arm to wave for a cab.

Staring after them, Jon said, “I don't think Tim's as oblivious as she thinks.”

Martin made a strangled, questioning noise.

“Yeah,” Jon said firmly. “He hasn't flirted with anyone in weeks. 'S not like him. Christ, if he'd just say something.”

Martin's throat seemed to have closed entirely. He looked at his water bottle, pondered pretending he was allergic to water. But he was saved, blessedly, by a small blue sedan that pulled up to the curb nearby. The driver's door opened and Martin's longtime imaginary celebrity friend-crush stepped out.

Oddly, it was... actually okay, seeing her in real life. It didn't feel as paralyzingly strange as Martin had expected. Georgie Barker was dark-skinned, short and stocky, her long braids streaked with red and orange. He recognized her grinning skull t-shirt as What The Ghost merch from at least three years ago. It had holes near the bottom hem. Most of the pictures Martin had seen had been publicity shots or fan photos from conventions, so it was a bit odd to see her without makeup or jewelry, wearing yoga pants and tennis shoes.

“Georgie!” Jon bellowed, wobbling away from the railing and beelining for a hug. Georgie _oof_ ed with startlement when the armful of clingy archivist hit her. “Georgie, you're not dressed up! W'happened to costume?”

“Oh dear, you are plastered, aren't you,” Georgie said, reaching up to pat Jon's head. “It isn't actually Halloween, sweetheart.”

“What!”

Georgie looked right at Martin and gave him a private, shared look of fond dismay. Martin felt himself going hot as the sun, and struggled not to grin like a complete lunatic. “Need help getting him loaded in?” Martin asked.

“Ack,” said Georgie, as Jon swung around to her side, holding her neck too tight. “Yes, please.”

So Martin helped wrangle Jon's voluminous skirt into the passenger seat of the car, while Georgie kept him from hitting his head. He was looking distinctly sleepy all of a sudden, and wasn't much help. “I'm sorry about the phone, earlier,” Martin said over the top of Jon's head.

“Hmm?”

“Just, um, the podcast thing. I've listened for, I dunno, four years? Definitely never thought I'd, you know -” Martin waved stupidly at nothing. _“This.”_

Georgie laughed. “Small world, then! I don't get recognized that often, since I'm not on camera.”

“Oh, I love your voice,” Martin gushed, then winced. “Not in a weird way, argh, sorry. I just mean, it's soothing? Makes the Tube go faster.”

She grinned at him and he realized she had a deep dimple. Lord, if he would ever feel attraction to a woman, it would probably be her. “Aww, well, thank you! Jon never mentioned you were a fan.”

Martin's brain short-circuited. “Jon – mention, what?”

“He's told me about you,” Georgie said. “Only a little, but there isn't high staff turnover at Magnus, you know? So someone new is a bit of news. He just said you're doing really well, that's all! D'you like it here?”

Martin mouthed silently for a moment. He finally managed a hoarse, too-high, “Yes!”

She smiled again. “Good! Thanks again for taking care of Jon. He needs more friends, honestly. Time to get him home, yeah?” She looked down at the man in question, who seemed to have dozed off and was steadily sliding down his seat as though he might curl up in the footwell. Georgie thumped his door shut, which startled him awake and confused.

Martin stammered through an awkward goodbye, trying not to think too hard about Jon leaning against his window to make doe eyes at Martin as he backed away from the car. Jon was an affectionate drunk, Martin reminded himself. He'd tell anyone he loved them right now, and he'd cling to any nearby warm body. Inside the car, Georgie looked over at Jon and said something, and Jon replied, and Georgie glanced through the windscreen at Martin and laughed. Then she waved, pulled out of the parking space, and was gone.

_What did Jon say?_ echoed over and over in Martin's head as he called himself a cab and went back into the Institute to collect his bag. The party was down to dregs, as it was fast approaching midnight and anyone serious about drinking had already gone out to find a pub. All the way home, Martin kept seeing the silent visual of Jon saying something to Georgie, then Georgie looking at Martin with a laughing grin. _What did he say? What did she ask?_

_He's an affectionate drunk. It's fine. Monday'll come around, and everything will be back to normal. Tonight won't matter._ Jon won't have hugged Martin around the neck and proclaimed about his freckles, won't have clung to Martin's arm or let Martin order him around to drink water and call his ride home. Jon won't have hung around with Martin for nearly half the length of the party, talking to almost no one else, scrunching up his nose in that goofy way when he laughed, stealing the last of Martin's snacks, swishing his skirts to point out certain constellations when he caught Martin staring at the patterns.

At half one in the morning, Martin laid on his back in bed, staring at the ceiling, paralyzed by his own mind. In the end, all he could keep telling himself was: _everything will be fine if you just act like tonight never happened._

Almost two hours later, he finally managed to get to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new content warnings. More of Martin's mother. Minecraft is an invention of The Lonely. Relentless pining.

_December_

“I'll come up to visit... I can, though! No, I don't have work, it's Christmas. Yeah, but that was – a lot of shops are open on holidays, this job is different. Mum, it _wouldn't_ be any trouble. It really wouldn't. …Don't say that, of course you're worth it.”

Beat.

“It's different.” His grip on the phone was too tight. “Things are different now, Mum.” His voice was too quiet. “... If you really don't want...” He closed his eyes. “Okay, I'll... okay. Please, if you change your mind, I can – yeah, I did hear you. Yes, Mum. Okay. Okay. I love you.”

His throat almost closed on “Happy Christmas,” and then he ended the call.

The lights were on. Through the wall, he could hear the faint sound of a neighbor's laughter. There was no rain drizzling down the window, no cinematic blue filter, no sad string music. There was only this. The slow pound of his heartbeat. The slide of air in and out of aching lungs. Sitting on his sofa, alone in his flat, breathing carefully around the wild animal crouching fearfully inside his chest.

He decided he wasn't hungry.

Some time later, curled up in bed under half a dozen blankets, listlessly watching the colors move on his sideways phone screen, his stomach growled. He sniffed, shifted his face against the disgustingly tacky-damp pillow, and thought about the microwave dinner he'd left thawing into mush on the kitchen counter. He felt slow and stupid and like a waste of sentience.

“Stop complaining about the audio, chat. God, all right, fine, I'll – hang on -” Jon blocked the mic on his headphones and tried to chew the next bite away from the recording. It sounded even worse. Jon was trying not to choke on his bite of pineapple while laughing at the sound, and at the chat for their wailing.

Martin's mouth tugged into a faint smile, almost against his will.

“I'm hungry! Shut up,” Jon laughed, rolling his head back. He reached off camera and brought up a bottle of water to take a quick drink. “Remember to hydrate,” he said offhandedly, peering at the chat box. “Yeah, take your meds. Self care. Chat's got this.” He put his plate down and shook out his hands one at a time. “Right, one more go at Vicar Amelia before I call it a night. This is the one, I can feel it.”

It wasn't the one. But by the time Jon died three more times and then declared, “May the good blood guide your way,” Martin's stomach was rumbling enough that he couldn't ignore it.

Well – that wasn't true, he could ignore it. He'd done it before. But he felt marginally better now, and a piece of toast and a cup of tea sounded surprisingly good. He sniffed again, scrubbed his jumper sleeve under his nose, and levered himself out of bed with a disgusted glance at his pillow.

Toast eaten, tea drunk, teeth brushed, pillow cover changed, phone plugged up to charge. Martin laid in bed again, hands clasped over his chest, and made himself confront the fact that his mother didn't want to see him for Christmas. And beyond that, the fact that he was relieved about it. The pain, resentment, and guilt were tangible, like an actual entity in the room with him, a little goblin with matted fur and sharp teeth crouched at the foot of his bed.

But he'd eaten a piece of toast, brushed his teeth, and made himself look at it. He'd acknowledged the gremlin as its own being, and did not let it claim his identity. That was better than he'd done in the past – much better. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and told the guilt, _not now. Not now. You can come back tomorrow. Just let me sleep._

And amazingly, it did.

-

"Is Martin in?"

At the sound of Jon's voice, Martin froze. For a frantic moment he tried to figure out how to disappear completely, but he was only just stood on the opposite side of a filing cabinet, and Amy glanced straight up at him.

"Sure," said Nnedi's voice. "Martin?"

Resisting the urge to groan, Martin stuck his head out from behind the cabinet. "Hi, just... looking for a... thing."

Jon had had a haircut since Halloween. It was no longer long enough to pull back, so it always hung to frame his face in faintly greying black waves. Now, he brushed a stray lock behind his ear and stepped further into the office. "Hi," he said. "I'm sorry, we, erm – we've got the wrong paper. Did the 11108 get misplaced?"

Martin's stomach sank to his shoes. "Oh," he said, despairing, "oh no, I'm so sorry! I, I don't know where it – I wasn't paying close enough attention, I have no idea where I dropped it off - I'm _so_ sorry -"

Jon waved away his apologies. "It's fine, Martin, it's not that big a problem! I can find it. Where did you deliver things today?"

Martin hurried out past Nnedi's desk, unable to meet Jon's eyes, head ducked down. "No, I'll get it. I'll fix it. Just - you can go back to work and I'll get it done -"

"Hey." Jon's hand landed lightly on his arm, and Martin flinched. Jon's fingers slid away. "I'll go with you, we can retrace your steps. May I?"

Martin wanted to say no, wanted to tell Jon to go away and leave him to his misery in peace, but he also didn't want that at all and hated the part of himself that insisted that he did. "Yeah," he said, still not looking at Jon, "all right."

Thankfully the rest of the admin staff didn't say anything as Martin followed Jon into the hallway, although he could feel their eyes on him. Martin turned immediately in the direction of Research, the last place he'd dropped off any office supplies. "Could be the library," he said. "They got a big order of index cards in and I didn't open the box to check it was all just that."

"Okay," Jon said. They walked for a moment. "Martin... are you all right?"

No. "Yeah," he said, "fine."

"Is it - did I say something?"

"What?"

Jon sighed. "I feel like you've been avoiding me for a while."

Martin blinked and finally glanced at Jon. His brow was pinched, worry lines somehow making the gray in his hair more pronounced. Martin realized he had shadows under his eyes, deeper than usual. "No," Martin said, too quickly. "I mean, not just you. I mean -" Oops, too much already. Martin huffed a defeated sigh. "Sorry, I think it's just the holidays, I haven't been all here."

"Oh. Right. I don't care much for the whole Christmas thing, either."

_I love Christmas,_ Martin wanted to say. _I've always loved Christmas. It's just that no one wants me around._ "Family," Martin said instead, putting on a rueful you-know-how-it-is smile, making light. "Can't live with them, can't live without them, am I right?"

Jon finally cracked a smile. "True enough. I always end up at Georgie's on the day of, and it's madness."

Martin walked on for a moment, then said, "You don't go home? Do anything with your own folks?"

Jon shrugged and shook his head. "Haven't got any. My parents died when I was too young to remember and my gran raised me. She passed a few years ago. I suppose there's some cousins, but I don't know them and they don't know me. Georgie's parents sort of claimed me when we were dating in uni, and now they treat me like one of theirs."

"Oh." Martin swallowed. God, thinking about a lonely little Jon with only his gran was... a little too close to home for comfort. "My dad... left," he said carefully. "Long time ago. And Mum's not well, so she's in an, um. A live-in place, that can help." He couldn't say the words nursing home. His mum wasn't that old – only people with one foot in the grave went to nursing homes, right? She was just ill. She was ill and she needed more care than Martin ~~was willing to~~ could realistically give. "And we're just sort of skipping the holidays this year, I guess. Which is fine! She isn't up to it. I'll give her a call on the day of, that's plenty."

They'd reached the door of Research. Jon reached out and touched Martin's arm again, drawing him to a halt. Jon mouthed for a moment, obviously struggling for words. "I'm sorry," he said at last. "That sounds really..." He made a soft noise in the back of his throat, then cleared it. "Really stressful. I'm sorry to hear it."

Martin shrugged. "Can't be too stressful, since nothing's happening," he said, trying to project cheer.

"Martin, it's... it's okay to, um. To not be okay. With everything." Jon shifted his shoulders awkwardly. "It's okay if you're hurting."

Martin's throat had gone altogether too tight. He couldn't look Jon in the eyes anymore. It had been over a month since Halloween and ever since, Jon had treated him like a friend, greeting him amiably whenever they crossed paths, stopping to chat over reheated lunches in the break room, smiling at him from a distance. More and more, Martin felt like an imposter. Who was Jon friends with? Not him, surely. Some idea of him, maybe. Jon thought he was friends with the Martin-shaped body that stood in front of him, but with _Martin?_ Impossible.

"I'm all right," Martin said. It was too quiet and a bit hoarse. He coughed quickly into his fist. "Let me just check in Research and then we'll try the library?"

Jon's brow pinched a little deeper, but he nodded. In the end, the fancy cotton rag paper was not in Research, nor the library, but in Artifact Storage. Thankfully it wasn't a department that needed much paper, so they hadn't even touched the packet since Martin had absently placed it near their printer. Jon held the paper to his chest while they made their way out of the handful of rooms crowded with old furniture, cracked dolls, broken radios, and other endless knickknacks.

"What do you do with it?" Martin asked suddenly.

"Hm?"

"The fancy paper."

Jon blinked down at the paper in his arms. "Oh. I - there are some very old documents in the archives, some back to the 1600s, which are in terrible shape. So we - well, mostly me - I take pages out of old files, reassemble the paper if I have to, scan everything in, and mount them on archive-grade materials like this so they can be preserved." He hugged the paper almost unconsciously. "It's time-consuming, but I like it. It's like putting puzzles together."

Martin felt himself thawing inside, enamored with how Jon talked. He obviously cared so much. "That's amazing," Martin said earnestly. "Wow. I just file forms and do sums, mostly."

Jon shook his head. "I can't do maths to save my life," he said, smiling gently. "It takes all sorts to keep the whole thing running. I - we all appreciate you a lot, Martin, all right?"

Martin coughed nervously and stuck his hands in his pockets. "Uh. Thanks."

When they reached the hall where they needed to split up, Martin leftwards to admin and Jon down the stairs to the basement, Jon cleared his throat and said, "Listen - the day before Christmas Eve, Georgie and I and a few other friends always go out to eat before we have to go jump in the deep end with families – and you could come. I mean, this is an invitation. I'd really like it if you could. But no pressure," he added hurriedly. "It's, ah, next Thursday. We'd already picked this Thai place - I understand if you wouldn't be comfortable with, ah, people you don't know, but. A lot of them are Georgie's friends, I don't know all of them all too well either, and - listen, it's sounding more stupid the more I talk, so I just. Won't, anymore. Sorry."

To his own shock, Martin heard himself say, "Yeah, all right."

Jon made a questioning noise.

"I can do that," Martin said. "I like Thai."

Jon brightened, a slow smile ticking the edge of his mouth. "Oh? Good! Good. I'll check with Georgie on the time and email you."

"Okay." Martin began to realize what he'd just agreed to, and his heart started to hammer harder. He should walk this back somehow, take it back, suddenly realize he had another commitment on that day, but - "Okay," he said, "that sounds really nice."

"Nice. Yes. I'll see you then." Jon took a few steps away, then turned back and hurriedly added, "I'll see you before then. I mean, here. At work. Unless you're still avoiding me."

Martin smiled genuinely for the first time in what felt like weeks. "I'm not. Well, I won't."

"Okay. Good. See you... around, then." And then Jon was off, walking quickly to escape the searing awkwardness.

Full of warring elation and dread, Martin made his way back to the admin office.

-

"So this is Micolash. Oh, that didn't - shit - _shit,_ I'm already dead. Okay. Well."

Martin loaded up his inventory with shovels and headed down to the beach near his house. He'd run out of glass for his massive greenhouse.

"Sorry, I'm really off today, it's just real life. Work." Sigh. "The chainsaw is so slow, I can't get the timings... let me try the cannon for a bit."

Martin liked the sound effect of digging sand blocks. It was soft and crunchy, and it was fun to make the water eddy and tip over in strange ways at the edges. He ought to build a fountain.

Jon had paused to read his chat. "Well, no, it's not just - so I have a weird relationship with my immediate boss, right? She thinks I'm gunning for her position. I'm really not, but she takes it out on me anyway sometimes. I don't know. She acts like a, a... disapproving mum. Always saying I need to seriously consider my career choices, but in this pointed way."

Martin's inventory slowly filled with sand. He frowned slightly as he turned to walk back to the bank of furnaces by his house.

"But it's not that that throws me off, it's when I let it get to me and take it out on someone else. I don't want to be _that_ person, but I get like a wound spring and then something small being out of place... I just... snap at people."

Martin stopped walking next to his pasture full of multicolored sheep. He listened.

"I think I made someone cry," Jon said, sounding rueful and miserable. "I hate the way I can be sometimes."

Martin minimized Minecraft and changed the window to Twitch. The blurry little circle of Jon in the bottom corner of the stream was, as always, too low-res to make out any real facial expression.

"Anyway," Jon said. "I don't want to talk about work. Micolash, Host of the Nightmare. I am focused, I am moving on. Come on, cannon up, echoes retrieved, let's do this."

Martin watched him for another minute, blasting away, until he died again and groaned, rolled his head back, cracked his neck and then his fingers, and started talking about game lore. It was impossible to tell what shirt he was wearing in the tiny image. And which shirt had it been that day they'd met, anyway? Martin had a vague memory of... green? Argyle? A brown jacket? He wasn't sure.

He suddenly realized how stupid he was and scrolled down to see the date of the post. It was months ago - at least a couple of months before Martin had been hired. Martin hadn't realized how tight his stomach had gotten before he suddenly un-tensed, letting out a sharp breath and sucking back in a deeper one. He scrolled back up and paused the video.

The guilt that had begun to tickle at his mind in the last few weeks began oozing into him, thick and immobilizing. He hurriedly closed Twitch, abruptly beset with the irrational fear of being observed, as though he'd been caught red-handed peeping in someone's window. He brought Minecraft back up and stared at his sheep milling around.

He couldn't keep doing this. It was insane, right? If he kept on watching, eventually he'd catch up to the time when Jon could conceivably _talk about him,_ and while some part of him was greedy to hear what Jon might say, a much bigger part of him wanted to shrivel up and die at the thought of being discussed. Of being acknowledged, of being known, of existing in the minds of others outside of his actual interactions with them. He'd always struggled with a self-concept of being an isolated entity, a person whose presence left no mark, whose very existence was forgotten as soon as he was out of sight. There was strange comfort in being impermanent.

But he knew, really, that that was both untrue and unhealthy. He'd never been to therapy, but he was sure that's what a therapist would tell him: that he needed to exist in the world and accept that he took up space, and that he was allowed to take up space, and that he deserved real relationships with other people. Needed them, in fact, for basic human functioning. Yes, that's what a therapist would say, and they'd be right.

Easier said than done, of course. All his relationships had always been circumstance-bound. Friendly cousins: tied to family gatherings. Friends in school: tied to school. Boyfriend in first semester of uni, before Martin dropped out to work: ended at the borders of campus. Friendship with coworkers at the shops: wonderful during work hours, absent outside of them. And now, more of the same.

Always, more of the same.

Except for tomorrow evening, when he would go out and take the Tube to South Kensington, walk to a restaurant, and have dinner with one coworker and a load of people he didn't know. _How_ had he agreed to that? He felt nearly sick every time he thought about it, it was incomprehensible, impossible, more than he could handle -

But it was also so necessary, in a way he could feel in his bones. He knew, on some level, that he was starving. He'd been starving for a long time. At some point, his body would take what it needed with or without the consent of his conscious mind. And that was the bit of him that had said yes to going out and being around people - the bit of him that recognized he might as well be a cloud of fog or a gust of wind if he didn't. The bit of him that knew that choosing between existing or not existing wasn't really a choice at all.

Chewing his lip, he made a decision. He couldn't keep doing this with the streams. There were other streamers, other podcasts, plenty else to occupy his mind. He could not keep watching Jon like this. From a distance, like a ghost. He had a real, live Jon he needed to live with, interact with, form an actual relationship with. A friendship, maybe. A true one, that had the fragile potential for extending outside the boundaries of circumstance. And with every stream he watched, Martin knew, deep down, that he was sabotaging that chance.

He sniffed against threatening tears, told himself to stop being an idiot, turned on some music instead, and doggedly began smelting stacks of glass.

-

The day before Christmas Eve dawned dim and only got darker. The charcoal clouds had begun spitting frigid sleet while Martin was walking to the Tube, and it had ramped into a proper ice bath by the time he got off again. He speed-walked along the correct street, squinting through the slit between his stacked-high scarf and pulled-down hat, trying to find the name of the place on an awning or a window without getting stung in the eyes by ice.

"Martin!"

He stumbled and turned, heel skidding for a heart-flipping moment on icy pavement. He remained upright somehow and spotted a figure stepping away from a wall towards him. Jon's long winter coat was a dark gray herringbone and looked like it might be a women's cut - Martin didn't have the eye of a tailor, but the coat was slim and cinched at the waist. It made Jon look underdressed for the cold, but far more overdressed than Martin was for the restaurant. The old familiar pang of class-consciousness kicked Martin in the back of the head and he wondered if this place was too up-scale for him.

But he made himself say "Hi!" and hurry over to meet Jon, ready to get inside out of the wintry weather regardless. "You didn't have to wait out here for me, it's a bloody nightmare."

Jon nodded vigorously, saying, "I know, it's just their sign is hard to see - didn't want you to miss it. Come on."

"Oh. Thanks." Martin peered up at the restaurant. Yes, he would have missed it for sure – _Surin East_ was in dark red decals on the windows, not enough contrast to stand out in the overcast lighting. A small neon _Open_ sign shone from the other side of the glass door. Jon pushed the door and Martin shuffled in behind him, stomping his slushy shoes on the welcome mat.

"We're at the back," Jon said, tugging his scarf down from his mouth. Martin did the same, and was blasted by the sudden heat. He puffed and grimaced, dragging the scarf out to let his neck breathe. Tugging his hat off, Martin realized that Jon looked nervous.

"Is something wrong?" Martin asked, nerves flaring in response.

"What? No!" Jon unwound his scarf and left it hanging around the back of his neck, long down either side of his front. "It's fine. There are, um - more people than I expected. I'm really glad you could come."

Martin's nerves fluttered in an entirely different way. "Am I, um... am I your plus one? I didn't really realize."

Jon made a face but then it cracked into a faint smile and he huffed a rueful laugh at himself. "Ah, yes," he said, looking at his feet. "More or less. I don't know, I've been sort of a workaholic and homebody for the last few years and Georgie's friend network extends into more of the entertainment industry. Those people can be... a lot."

Martin laughed. Looking around the interior of the restaurant, it dawned on him that he was dressed exactly right for the venue, and it was Jon who looked too posh. Like he was overcompensating, trying to project cool. It was adorable.

"Are you still all right with this?" Jon asked anxiously. A couple opened the door behind them, crowding them forward, and a server gave them an impatient look. "I can make your excuses -"

"Hey, I'm not going back out in that," Martin said, grinning with genuine cheer now. "And I'm hungry, and it smells amazing in here. I can be your boring academia wingman, no problem."

Jon smiled properly at last. He awkwardly waved away a hostess who asked if they needed seating, pointing further into the restaurant and mumbling something about being with a party. Martin followed close on his heels as they wove between tables and turned a short corner into a second section of dining area.

A long banquette had been formed by pushing several tables together, and from the further end of it, Martin immediately spotted Georgie Barker waving them over. A handful of seats were unoccupied, including two by her. When Jon took the seat next to Georgie, Martin shed his coat and awkwardly wedged his way into the spot between Jon and the next person, a dazzlingly handsome black man with short dreads and a lot of glittering earrings.

"Oh," Martin said, a bit breathless. "Hi." He held out an awkward hand sideways. "I'm Martin, I, um, work with Jon..."

"Oliver," said the man, smiling with very white teeth, shaking Martin's hand quickly. "I'm a friend of Georgie's. I don't know many others here, do you?"

"Not a one," Martin said, flashing a nervous glance down the table. Everyone was chatting animatedly already, the din from this table alone probably doubling the din of the restaurant overall. "Jon said there'd be a lot of creative types and I just, uh, I'm just an admin guy, so. Sorry you're stuck by me." He glanced over Oliver's perfect features again and resisted the urge to ask if he was a model.

But Oliver laughed, deep and sonorous. "Well, I'm a mortician. You may be the sorrier one."

"Really?" Martin asked, stunned and instantly fascinated. "Wow, I'm not sorry. Can I ask questions or, uh -" He glanced around again. "I guess it's not a table conversation."

Oliver shrugged. "Doesn't put me off my appetite. Have you been here before?"

"No, have you?"

"A few times. The golden tofu is always good..."

Martin didn't even feel the time passing. He ordered drunken noodles with prawns with barely a glance at the menu, pinging back and forth between an amazingly engaging conversation about death practices with Oliver, and jabs in the side from Jon's elbow for his attention as Georgie pointed out people to name and describe. There were a handful of video makers, three podcasters, a couple of essayists, a multimedia artist (Nikola, who was... a lot to take in at first glance), a costumer (Chloe Ashburt, a little person who apparently was the source of the archive staff's custom Halloween looks), a self-avowed psychic (Annabelle Cane, whose stare gave Martin the creeps - he was glad she was too far down the table to talk to), and of course Oliver Banks, and on Georgie's other side, her girlfriend, Melanie.

Melanie King had been the host of the biggest ghost hunting show on YouTube at the outset of the medium, and was essentially responsible for spawning an entire independent genre. Martin had never watched her show, Ghost Hunt UK, more than a few minutes at a time – it was too much for him. But he'd been aware enough of her and her show that the accident that ended it had caught his attention, back when it happened. It had involved a magnesium flare, a too-small space, and bad timing, and it had left Melanie King functionally blind. Ghost Hunt UK had come back after a year off with a new host, but it never gained traction again and quietly fizzled out.

That was years ago, though. She sat on Georgie's other side, laughing uproariously at whatever the man by her (Mike? Martin thought) was saying, fingers dancing expertly across the cutlery and dishes. Her fingertip would brush the edge of her glass and then dip minutely inside the rim, checking for liquid level, before she raised it to take a drink. She turned her face away from a person as soon as they addressed her; after a few minutes Martin realized she was pointing an ear at them. When she brushed her dyed hair back behind her ear, he noticed something inserted in it.

Maybe halfway through dinner, her attention rounded on him. She jabbed Georgie in the shoulder and said, “Introduce me to S'more over there.” She pointed right at him.

Martin nearly choked on a prawn. “'Scuse me?”

Georgie tutted. “His name's Martin,” she told Melanie.

“No,” Melanie said, “I already know a Martin. Gotta keep all these boys straight.”

Martin snorted dismissively. “Fat chance of that.”

“Oh-ho,” Melanie said, tapping her nose and looking shrewd. “The parade grows!”

Jon cut in, “Melanie, not _everyone_ you know is queer.”

“But _so_ close,” Melanie said. “Anyway, I just meant straight in my head. I'm not as good at getting names to stick on voices as I was on faces. And you sound like...” She tapped her fingers against her water glass. “Toasty marshmallows and a warm blanket. That's what your voice gives off.”

Martin flushed deeply. “Oh – hah, I'm fine with that!”

Melanie pointed vaguely down the table. “Annabelle, she's Spiderwoman, because when she talks I feel like something's crawling up my neck. Oliver's the Grim Reaper, he sounds like death.”

“Honored,” Oliver said, raising his glass in a mock toast.

“And yet amazingly you also call them all by name,” Jon said, dry as a desert.

Melanie pointed at him. “You know you're Little Rat Man, Sims. Don't test me.”

Jon huffed and took a belligerent bite of his spicy basil stir fry.

“So, S'more,” Melanie said. “You and Jon are dating, right?”

It was Jon's turn to nearly choke.

“No,” Martin said. It sounded weak even to his own ears. He cleared his throat a bit and tried to laugh it off. “No, we just work together.”

Melanie hummed, unimpressed. Next to Martin, Oliver muffled a low chuckle behind his hand.

“Hey,” Georgie told Melanie quellingly, “leave off.”

Melanie shrugged. She deftly felt out her fork and stabbed a couple of times until she achieved a piece of chicken. She popped it in her mouth and said, around the chewing, “Jon hasn't invited anyone from work to, like, anything. Ever. So sue me.”

“Really?” Martin said before he could think better of it. He swallowed and glanced at Jon. “I thought you were more, I dunno. Close to Sasha and Tim?”

Jon shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I am, yes, I just hadn't – I don't know, it hadn't occurred to me to ask. I see them at work parties, I see Georgie's friends at Georgie parties. I suppose I should have invited them, too.”

“No!” Then, to backtrack from the too-quick yelp, he added, “I didn't mean I thought you should have asked them, I just mean I'm flattered, I guess.”

The look on Jon's face was complicated – furtive, for sure, and a bit panicky-cornered, but also pleased. “Yes, well. This lot are a circus, and I feel like Tim or Sasha would only add to it. You're, um – I trust you to be on my side, I suppose.” Martin beamed. “Moral support. Against _this one_ -” Jon pointed his fork at Melanie. “And her _Little Rat Man -”_

“Adorable tiny bastard man!” Melanie cooed, earning herself a light shove from Georgie and breaking the slightly weird mood that had overtaken their end of the table. Jon kept arguing, repeating that Melanie knew him before she lost her sight, she knew he wasn't that short; Melanie kept needling him relentlessly, while Georgie descended into giggles.

Oliver's elbow gently nudged Martin's arm, drawing his attention away. “If you want to give it a go,” he murmured in his low timbre, “you should ask him.”

Martin squeaked.

Oliver tipped a shoulder in the ghost of a shrug. “I don't see Jon much, but I know I've never seen him act like he does around you.”

“Eh?”

Oliver smiled enigmatically. “Just saying. Life's short.”

Martin floundered for any way to respond to that. His heart raced and his palms were starting to sweat. Oliver casually went back to his tofu pad phrik. Martin stuffed his mouth with noodles and tried to calm his pulse.

The dinner pressed on. The first hour drifted into the second, and entree plates were replaced with desserts, drinks refilled for the second, third, fourth times. Martin politely waved away the suggestion of dessert, too full of noodles to even think about eating more. But then Georgie and Jon split a gorgeous-looking bowl of black sticky rice with mango and coconut, and Martin must have gazed a little too longingly at it, because Jon found a spare spoon from somewhere and let Martin taste a bit of his half.

It looked like several people were in it for the long haul, drinks and energy levels primed to go on for hours. As much fun as Martin had had, he was starting to wear a bit thin at the edges and needed to think of an exit strategy soon so that he could get home and recharge.

Oliver saved him from being the first person to duck out. The mortician made a graceful exit, telling Georgie that his fiancee Graham would be wondering if he'd fallen down a sinkhole or something if he didn't get home soon. Oliver dropped his hand lightly on Martin's shoulder as he passed along the length of the table, giving a gentle squeeze, and then he was gone.

A couple more filtered out shortly after. The knot of heavy drinkers gathered closer together, and Martin overheard suggestions of pubs being tossed around among them. Across the table from Martin, Melanie leaned over to Georgie. Almost too quietly for Martin to catch, she said, “My head's starting to go, babe.”

“Right,” Georgie said, reaching over to rub Melanie's arm. “Earplugs holding up?”

Melanie made a brief face. “They'd be fine if Nikola wasn't here.” Down the table, Nikola was several drinks deep and loudly holding court about animatronics to anyone would listen.

Georgie laughed. “You're not wrong. Let me get us paid up and I'll start making the goodbye rounds.”

Melanie nodded. Georgie gave her a swift peck on the cheek before trying to wave down a server.

“Is Georgie your ride home?” Martin asked Jon.

“Hm?” Jon blinked out of some deep contemplation – or possibly just sticky-rice induced sleepiness – and noticed the state of things around him. “Oh, no, actually, I was going to take the Tube.” He nodded faintly towards Georgie and Melanie and murmured, “I don't like to be a third wheel.”

“I heard that,” Melanie said.

“Oh,” said Martin. “Right.” He contemplated for a second, then threw caution to the wind. “Walk with you to the station? I feel like I should get home before I go into a noodle coma.”

Jon laughed, that easy, nose-scrunching laugh that Martin had already fallen hopelessly in love with. “Sure. I should do the same.”

A few bank note-and-card-shuffling minutes later, they were paid up and bundling back into their cold weather gear for the two-block Arctic hike. Georgie and Melanie stayed to say goodbye to more people, but Jon only gave a couple of quick waves before hurrying away.

The wind slapped Martin miserably awake the moment he pushed the door open. “Ah, bloody hell,” he said, rearranging his scarf to cover more nose.

“Sleet's stopped,” Jon said with grudging optimism, but then immediately slid on a patch of ice. Martin caught him by the arm to balance him. “Damn!”

“You need pitons for this,” Martin said. “Or cleats.”

“Crampons.”

“Hm?”

“Crampons are the spiky bits for shoes, pitons are for handholds.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Sorry.” Jon shook his head, eyes on the pavement. He walked carefully around slick-looking patches. “Georgie tells me I need to stop correcting people. No one likes a know-it-all.”

“Oh, rubbish. I like you just fine, even if you are a know-it-all.”

Jon's nose scrunched again with his muffled laugh. Martin could barely make out his face in the dark evening, under the scarf mask.

A block onward, Martin took a deep breath and gave it his most daring shot. “Jon, are we, um – are we friends?”

Jon shot him a bemused, questioning look. “Yes? I think we meet the criteria, don't you?”

Martin was glad his layers covered his flushed cheeks. “Yeah, sure. I just – I'm not always good at knowing where I am, with other people. When I'm not sure, I default to, uh... assuming no one wants to see me. So it feels stupid to ask, but...”

“Yes,” Jon interrupted firmly. “I'm your friend, Martin. I hope you think of me as yours. I know we got off on a bad foot, but I've really liked having you around past few months, and I definitely want to see you.” He bumped his arm against Martin's. Even through a thick mass of winter layers, Martin's arm felt suddenly warmer. “All right?”

“Yeah,” Martin said weakly. “Thanks. I'm not trying to fish for compliments or anything. I was just checking.”

Jon bumped him again. “No need to fish,” he said. “You're a good man, Martin. I'm glad I know you.”

They split at the station stairs, heading towards different lines. Before he left, Jon gave Martin a big smile – only visible in the crinkles around his eyes, since the bottom half of his face was enveloped in scarf – and said, “Happy holidays.” Martin smiled and waved back, then watched for a moment until he lost Jon in the crowd.

For an entire two hours afterwards, Martin managed not to cry. Only once he was in bed, warm and soft in pyjamas and a mound of blankets, did he finally let himself feel the full force of his happiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My enabling friends pointed out to me that I compulsively describe food in fanfic and now I'm hyperconscious of it. Will it stop me? No. Will I make myself very sad that I don't have sticky rice with mango in front of me? Yes.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like a slow burn but have so little patience for writing one, so consider this a speedrun of the seasons by chapter. 1- Jon yell at Martin. 2 - Jon paranoid around Martin. 3 - Martin crush go nuclear. 4 - Martin attempts to stay away, fails. 5 - spoiler: Jon contracts terminal case of Feelings.
> 
> Cw memories of acephobia and a bit of internalization & anger from that.

-

"Psst."

Tim startled and pulled out an earbud. Sasha was peeking past the edge of the doorway, gesturing for him to come to her. He rolled his shoulders and got up with a casual yawn, picked up his coffee mug, and went to the door. From his own desk on the other side of the office, Jon never even looked up from his delicately arranged pile of paper fragments.

Sasha hustled Tim down the hall, back towards her own office that was just next to Gertrude's. She stopped in an empty space, presumably out of any earshot.

"What's the cloak and dagger for?"

"Tim, are you _sure_ Martin watches those game streams?"

Tim blinked. "Well I know I caught him watching the one, but if he never watched any others then he'd have to have the self-discipline of a monk. Why?"

"The most recent one," Sasha murmured. "From last week. Jon went off on a tangent about the holidays and kind of made it sound like he'd asked someone on a date. Someone from work."

Tim crossed his arms, empty mug held precariously off to the side. "You keep up with him that close? Little creepy, Sash. Who's got the crush now?" He waggled his eyebrows.

She rolled her eyes and did a little stomp of frustration. "You started this!"

Tim made a noncommittal face. "Yeah, but you know me, I'm terrible at follow-through."

"That's why you've got me!"

Tim's stomach fluttered. "Yeah," he said, "'spose it is. So, what about all this?"

"I don't know, do I?" Sasha groaned faintly. "They're driving me mad! Martin can't be watching these, then, can he? Unless it's someone else Jon asked out? Oh, God, I can't imagine who."

Tim puffed out a long breath. "Oof. Dunno. Rosie? Elias?"

_"Bouchard?"_ Sasha scoffed. "No. I can hardly believe he's still employed."

Tim lowered his arms with a long sigh and leaned against the wall. "Sash, I know I started it, but I'm kind of thinking we ought to drop it now? It's getting creepy, watching people when they don't know. Maybe it always was. I know Jon's infuriating, but - I dunno, watching a bit of those streams took the wind out of my sails. He's just a bloke with issues he doesn't talk about at work. I mean... who isn't?"

Sasha deflated. Her expression went from defensive to guilty to miserable over a long minute of struggle, and then she crossed her arms and leaned on the wall next to him, close enough to press their sides together. "You're right," she mumbled. "I just want to know it's possible for things to work out. Even for idiots who don't talk."

Tim licked his bottom lip and chewed it for a moment, then said, "Um. Sasha. D'you want to get a drink after work?"

She hummed. "Sure. Who all is coming?"

He coughed a short laugh and said, "No, I meant... kinda just meant you and me."

She went very still and flicked a glance towards him.

"I think Jon doesn't have the monopoly on being an idiot who doesn't talk," Tim said sheepishly, pushing at the grain of the institutional carpet with the toe of his shoe. "So. You in?"

She began to smile. "Yeah. Reckon I am."

He couldn't help the lopsided grin that broke out. "Okay. Great." He pushed off from the wall and turned to head off towards the kitchen for an actual coffee refill. "And maybe leave off stalking Jon for now," he added, turning back.

Sasha rolled her eyes but kept on smiling as she walked into her office.

-

On the other side of the right angle of a wall, Jon didn't breathe. Tim's footsteps turned and he walked into Jon's view, but facing away, heading for the kitchen. Jon didn't know what would have happened if Tim had been coming back to the office. He'd have seen Jon standing there, known he'd heard it all, and... what? Some kind of confrontation, probably. But Jon didn't have the mental wherewithal to dodge out of sight. He just stood there like an idiot, mind going a million miles an hour.

He'd caught the very end of Tim leaving the office, mug in hand, and it had reminded him that he hadn't moved in a couple of hours and that he was stiff and thirsty. So he'd stood, stretched with a lot of bone-crackling, remembered he needed to ask Sasha something, and strode out towards her office. And heard his own name. _"Jon went off on a tangent -"_

He'd frozen. He'd listened. And considering the content of the conversation, he couldn't bring himself to feel bad about a minor accidental spot of eavesdropping.

Jerkily, he turned back towards his office. He found himself sitting at his desk again, staring at the puzzle of parchment fragments he'd been piecing together for hours, confused and... God, what was he feeling? Betrayed, miserable, angry? Probably. He couldn't parse it all at the moment. He just felt awful, like he'd been the victim of a hit-and-run that had bruised some ribs and made getting a lungful of air feel impossible.

There were too many things... too many strands to pick apart. His streams were – well, they were public, yes, but they were also personal, because they were an outlet. They were how he decompressed, how he fed an aspect of himself that he didn't want to be smothered to death by workaday dullness.

When he'd been a teen, he'd received a horrible burn to his right hand. After healing relatively cleanly, the nerves were still wonky and the skin was still stiff, so he'd done a lot of physical therapy with it to regain functionality. That was when he'd picked up a controller. Of course there had been a million different suggestions out there for hobbies that could boost his dexterity – needlework, guitar, painting – but a mate of his had had an Xbox, and none of the rest of it held his attention for long. Gaming had struck the right chord in him because of the precision of it. All the other suggestions were hobbies that involved a certain level of personal creative input, and Jon... didn't have that. Trying to paint or play music made him feel boring and stupid, because he had never been especially good at the abstraction of creativity. He liked order, purpose, and clear direction. He liked precision and perfect execution. There was an elation in _knowing_ something so exactly, in such fine detail, that you could be in perfect synchrony with it.

Which is why, over years of playing, he'd leaned further and further into games that prioritized complex hard-mode combat. His hand had regained full dexterity years ago, but it was still deeply satisfying to feel his fingers obey him with lightning precision on a controller. He'd never have considered starting a streaming channel if he hadn't lived with Georgie. She was so used to commodifying... well, herself, as a brand. Not in a bad way, Jon thought – the modern homegrown content creation industry was not a bad thing – he'd just never thought he'd be a part of it. In most ways, he still didn't consider himself a part of it.

That... that was the problem, wasn't it? He'd never truly thought of his channel's viewers as hundreds of individual, real human beings, with their own minds and thoughts and interests. He thought he'd done a good enough job of being considerate, engaging, and generally a good host, but... he didn't really think about his fans as _people_ who would _know_ things about him. Because he'd told them those things! Not because they'd stalked him or anything – purely because while he played, he talked. It felt like talking to empty air, or the cat, or a friend. Sometimes a therapist. All of which felt very good on Jon's end, but he now realized was... God, such a weird fucking thing to do, wasn't it? A weird burden to put on other real people. Strangers.

He used his random chatter to work out things in his own mind sometimes. Things like... his phobias, his relationship with his gran, his philosophies about life in general. Things like asking a coworker out to a holiday dinner with friends. Things that were astonishingly personal, now he really considered it.

He turned his mind to his coworkers, specifically. Sasha – he didn't mind the idea of Sasha seeing all that stuff, not really. Sasha was calm and level and smart and not prone to drama. Tim? Frankly he was amazed Tim hadn't rubbed his face in it from the very first moment. Maybe Sasha had stopped him? It sounded like they'd known for a while now -

_How long...?_ How many weeks, how many streams? What had Jon said in them? He blanked on everything he'd ever thought, much less said out loud. Stream after stream, he blathered about anything he found interesting, talked far too much about game lore, cursed and railed and was so horrifically unprofessional. Christ! Hadn't he outed himself on stream before? He hadn't really thought about it, because it was safe to talk to not-actually-real internet strangers who were just messages in a chat box. Who were so wonderfully supportive, as well. Chat had told him over and over that being ace and bi was valid, which he knew, but it was so nice to see.

"Chat." He thought of Chat as a person, really. His friend, Chat.

God, he felt like such an idiot.

He sank in his chair, face burning, stomach tight as a clenched fist, and suddenly thought: Martin.

He covered his face with his hands, struggling for air. _Martin._ His... his friend, the best thing that had happened to Jon in months... who was so jumpy and goofy but when he lost some of his nervousness, was such a joy to talk to. Martin, who as soon as he saw Jon enter the staff kitchen would steep a perfect cup of chai to hand over, and who would spend his whole lunch break lingering in the break room with Jon, losing time while chatting. Martin, about whom Jon had only just begun to realize that he might have – that he felt sort of -

There could be something there. There could have been a chance.

But Martin... watched his streams? And had never said anything?

After a while, footsteps in the hallway made Jon sit up straight and try to school his face into something blank and normal. Tim came back into the office, went to sit at his desk and dig back into the stack of letters he'd been digitizing. Tim cast a look across the office and said, "You okay? You look a bit peaky."

Jon made an uncertain noise. "Fine. Or, no - I'm, uh, I suppose I'm feeling a bit off. Since lunch."

"Ooh, rough," Tim said, wincing.

"No," Jon hurried, "I mean my head hurts."

"Oh, well, that'll be the hours of Hunchback of Notre Dame posture and the staring at old tat as though your glasses are magnifying lenses," Tim said sagely.

Jon swallowed. He reached for the thin sheet of glass he used to press and preserve reconstruction in progress if he had to walk away from it, and settled it carefully over his desktop. "Right," he said. "I think you're right. I'm going to take an early one today."

Tim's eyebrows shot up. "Wait, really? Jon Sims doing actual self care? Why, I never."

"I feel astonishingly poorly," Jon said acidly. "I'll let Gertrude know I'm going." He picked up his satchel and stuffed a couple of things in it.

"Okay," Tim said, frowning now. "Sure it's just a headache?"

"I have to go," Jon said in a final rush, because he couldn't look at Tim right now. He hurried out, barely remembering to pause at Gertrude's door to say goodbye. It was already midafternoon, so he wasn't skipping much of the day. She was unusually kind about his sudden departure, and gave him a parting admonishment to take care of himself.

Jon took the back corridor through artifact storage through to the library, so he wouldn't pass the admin office door on the way out. His first lungful of cold fresh air hit him like a punch to the solar plexus and he had to pause on the Institute's front steps, struggling for a full breath.

After a minute he collected himself, hiked his bag up his shoulder, and started walking. He'd passed the nearest Tube station before he consciously thought about it, but as he pressed onward he decided that the brisk exercise in the winter chill was exactly what he needed.

His and Georgie's flat was near Hyde Park, a hell of a walk from work. By the time he passed Marble Arch, his faced ached, his eyeballs felt frozen solid, and every breath burned with cold. He was chilled down through every layer, and could barely feel his fingers. He should have caught the train for any of it at all, even just the last stop, but inertia and his own stubbornness had taken over. Besides, the walk had served its purpose – he hadn't thought about anything but the cold for at least half an hour.

Usually he took the stairs inside his building for the exercise, but he figured he could be forgiven for taking the rattly old elevator this time. Waiting for the slow, squeaky contraption to haul him up to the second floor gave him time to catch his breath and thaw out a little.

Down the hall, key scraping in the lock, and then he was home and some of the tension in his shoulders released. He heard footsteps in the kitchen, coming towards him. He turned to lock the door again so he didn't have to look at her.

“Jon? You're home early.”

“Yes,” Jon said. “I just had a headache and ducked out, Gertrude said it was fine.”

She didn't say anything. The door was locked; he had to turn into the flat again. Georgie wore the exact expression he'd expected.

“It's nothing,” Jon said.

“No,” Georgie said, frowning at him. “You don't have to tell me what's wrong, but you don't get to lie.”

Jon rubbed his hands together to get some life back in them. As he warmed up, he could feel his face flushing horribly as blood rushed back to it, and his frozen sinuses started to liquify. He sniffed. “I need a tissue,” he said, striding past Georgie to the living room, where a box of tissues sat on the coffee table. She gripped his arm as he walked past her, then let go with a small wince.

“God, Jon, you're icy! Did you walk all the way home?”

He shrugged one shoulder, folded a tissue and blew his nose. His eyes watered and stung as they warmed. He pulled another tissue and wiped them.

“I'm dead serious, Jon,” Georgie said. “You don't have to tell me whatever it is, but you don't get to say you're fine and expect me to believe it for a damn second.”

His throat was too tight. From the cold, he told himself, just from the swift change in temperature. He kept the tissue pressed to his eyes, willing them to stop watering.

He felt Georgie's hands on his arms, pushing and steering him to sit on the sofa. A blanket dropped over his shoulders; hands pulled off his freezing scarf and tucked the warm, fleecy blanket up around his neck and face. He struggled to inhale without choking on it.

“I just made myself some coffee, but d'you want tea?” said Georgie's voice. “I know you aren't the biggest coffee fan.”

“Coffee's fine,” Jon croaked into his hands.

“Okay,” she said. “Stay there.”

He had himself back under control by the time she returned with two mugs and another blanket held in the crook of her arm. Jon recognized it as one originally from Melanie's flat; Georgie had a tendency to steal things that smelled like her. No-nonsense as ever, Georgie put the mugs on the table, sat down close to him, threw the blanket over both their laps, and turned to gather Jon into an enormous, enveloping hug. “You know I'm here for you,” she said over his shoulder.

He turned his face into her neck, took one breath, and lost whatever control he'd had.

Jon didn't cry often. It wasn't that he resisted or opposed it – not consciously, anyway – it just... didn't happen much. He almost never cried at fiction, and he didn't get the empathy-compulsion to cry because someone else was crying. It always seemed to come out of nowhere, and because it was uncommon, he never knew how to handle it with grace. Georgie grabbed him a fresh handful of tissues so he wouldn't get snot on her shoulder, but kept hugging him and swaying gently for what felt like an hour. “All right, love,” she murmured a couple of times when he tried to start a sentence but couldn't manage words yet.

At last, he heaved a breath and let it out again without it catching on anything. He scrubbed his nose with the tissues, his eyes with his shirt sleeve, and pushed back from Georgie by a few inches. She rubbed his back. He felt weak and stupid, and the headache that had been a lie earlier was now present in full force, as if to taunt him.

“So, something happened,” Georgie said. “Again, you don't owe me anything, all right? But you also know I'd kill for you, given the right motivation.”

He choked a brief laugh. “No one to kill but myself.”

Georgie gave him a sharp look.

He shook his head, closing his eyes. “I don't mean it like... no, I don't mean that. I just mean – I'm so bloody stupid.”

“You better not talk about my best friend like that.”

He huffed. “I can't remember if I ate lunch. Can we order something in and then I'll explain?”

“All right. Comfort junk is called for, I'm assuming.”

“Please.”

It ended up being dim sum and noodles from the nearest Chinese. Jon drank his tepid coffee and added too many dumplings to the order, and once it had been placed he retreated to his room to change out of work clothes. He tried to gather his thoughts while he bundled into a thick jumper and soft joggers, and washed down a couple of paracetamol at the bathroom sink.

He felt far more put together by the time the food was delivered, and his grumbling stomach confirmed to him that he had, in fact, forgotten lunch. Georgie bypassed the tiny kitchen table and laid the takeaway out on the coffee table instead, bringing the conversation back to the comfort of the sofa. When Jon took his seat, legs curled up to the side, he glanced up at the television and had a disconcerting moment of feeling watched. The streaming setup was not high quality – the face cam was a cast-off from Melanie's old collection of recording gear – but still, he gazed into the shiny black beetle eye of the lens and shuddered internally at the realization of how much that lens had seen, of who had been watching him through it.

He thought about getting up and turning the camera away, but he made himself be rational. It wasn't recording anything. The camera wasn't watching him. Besides, he was hungry, and Georgie was already pressing a loaded plastic container into his hands.

Jon inhaled half a dozen shrimp shu mai before he even started tasting them. “We've talked about this,” Georgie said, poking his hand with her chopsticks. “You need to set a reminder on your phone or something to eat _something_ midday, even if it isn't a full lunch.”

“I know,” Jon said around around a mouthful of dumpling. “I have an alarm, I just don't hear it.”

“It doesn't drive Tim crazy enough for him to snap you out of it, even?”

Jon muttered, “I only have it set to vibrate.”

“Argh, that's why you don't hear it!”

Jon set aside the decimated dumpling tray and picked up the container of lo mein instead. The Admiral jumped up onto the table and sniffed delicately at the empty tray before starting to lick it, determined to get every molecule of shrimp flavor off. Jon filled his mouth with cabbagey noodles and knew he'd lose consciousness soon from all these carbs on an empty stomach, but right now that sounded ideal. “My disordered eating habits _aside,”_ he said, “how was your day?”

Georgie rolled her eyes but graciously allowed the conversation to veer off into harmless territory for a while. She'd spent most of the day editing, besides a little bit of the mid-morning spent on an unexpected follow-up interview with a previous WTG guest. Melanie hadn't been over today because she'd finally received the new Braille typewriter she'd ordered over the holidays, but she'd spent hours on the phone with Georgie cursing and yelling at it while she tried to get it working.

“That's all I've got,” Georgie said, sipping the beer she'd gotten with her food. “Not too exciting as days go.”

“Okay,” Jon sighed. “Right. Well. I found out some people at the Institute have been watching my streams.”

Georgie blinked. She put her beer down and ate a dumpling. After a moment, she said, “Huh. And they gave you some kind of grief over it?”

“Well – no. I overheard them talking. No one told me.”

“Ohhh,” Georgie said, drawing it out. “Who, or do you know?”

“Just Sasha and Tim, as far as I know. And, erm. Martin from admin.” Jon put down his mostly empty lo mein container and picked up the Admiral to keep him from scarfing down the rest. The cat conceded to warm lap and ear scritches, at least for the moment.

“And the crux of the issue is the fact that they didn't tell you?”

Jon huffed. “Well, no! Excuse me if I think it's an issue that my office mates have seen me being egregiously unprofessional, and, and, losing my damn mind over stupid, animated -”

“Oh, come off it, Jon, they've seen you drunk at parties, they've seen you passionate about things. How different are you on stream, really?”

“I – it's just uncomfortable, all right! Some separation of work and private life would be nice.”

Georgie's expression softened. “I hate to say this, but a public internet presence can't be how you define your private life. Or not the only way, at least.” She picked up her beer again and took a long swallow.

“Ugh. Ugh, I know, that's – I told you I feel stupid, Georgie. Here it is, here's the stupidity, you're looking at it.”

“Okay, okay, let's back up and have another look at this, then. You don't go on about anything on stream that would really change how your coworkers interact with you, do you? They haven't discovered you're a secret Tory or whatever. Has them watching changed anything about your relationships with them?”

Jon rolled his head back against the sofa. “How would I know, if they haven't said anything to me? I haven't changed _my_ behavior, but I can't know they haven't changed theirs. I don't even know how long it's been going on.”

“Yeah, true. That's fair. But... if you think back, was there ever a change?”

Jon thought about it. Thought back to the actual words he'd heard Sasha say, and what they implied. “I think... I got the impression that Sasha had seen the most recent stream, but Tim hadn't. He'd stopped watching at some point. Martin... I don't know. And no, I can't think of any... bumps in the road, I suppose. Tim's always been _Tim,_ and Sasha's headstrong but lovely, you know them.”

Georgie gave him a sympathetic raised eyebrow but didn't say anything.

Jon huffed and crossed his arms. In the absence of scritches, the Admiral took the opportunity to creep back to the coffee table and investigate the leftovers. “Fine, all right. The crux of the issue isn't them watching, it's them not telling me. What am I supposed to do with that? Why wouldn't they?”

“Well... you've met yourself, right?”

“You're not helping.”

“Ah hell, I'm sorry, I admit that was a low blow.”

“And even if I haven't been, I don't know, a secret racist at home all along, I've still talked about things I wouldn't have, in front of them – I'm _sure_ I've outed myself more than once – which, I know, I know, they wouldn't care, but -” He paused, then groaned. “And in the last stream I talked about the holidays, and Sasha was trying to figure out who I asked to dinner, and it's just miserable to be the butt of gossip, Georgie, you know that.” 

“I do,” she said sincerely, sighing. “I really do. Jon, I'm really sorry.”

Jon buried his face in his hands. “God, did Martin watch that one?” he mumbled, muffled.

Georgie was quiet for a long moment. “Have you... made any move on that front, Jon? Talked to him?”

“About what?” Jon mumbled.

Georgie sighed. “Sweetheart, I'm not blind. Even Melanie isn't, about this.”

Jon drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, burying his face against soft cotton. “I'm not attracted to anyone,” he said petulantly. “I can make friends.”

“You make friends just fine, love. You do not, and have never, acted like this when you are feeling platonic. You can't act like I haven't known you for over fifteen years.”

Jon groaned against his knees. “Why? Why him, why now? Why's he watched my streams and never said anything? If I feel something, _fine,_ but what the hell am I meant to say to him now?”

Georgie gave an 'I know you won't like this, but I'm going to say it' hum, and said, “You tell him exactly what you know and ask about it.”

The sound Jon made contained no words, but clearly said, 'I don't want to and you can't make me.'

“Fine,” Georgie said, shrugging. “You don't say anything, nothing changes. It's an option. But I think the fact that I haven't even said his name should tell you something, Jon. You know perfectly well that romantic attraction is attraction, and you are _gone_ on him.”

“No,” Jon complained weakly. “It's stupid. It's a crush, it'll go away.”

Georgie groaned in frustration. “It doesn't _have_ to! I've only met him a couple of times and even I can see he's well into you! There is literally no obstacle here, the stars are not crossed, just ask the nice boy from admin out on a date, Jon, _Christ.”_

Jon grumbled his complaint into his knees. He knew she was right. He didn't know why he resisted, besides... well, he was comfortable as he was, and relationships were work. He was sure Martin would be amenable to the first date – the first few dates – but then the inevitable roadblocks would start to come up, Jon's quirks chief among them. His need to be alone, his snappishness at sharing space or belongings. His unpredictable relationship with his own body. His disinterest in sex. Any and all of them had been non-starters in attempted relationships before, and he was so tired of it. He had fulfilling friendships and hobbies and work, so why get greedy?

He couldn't, and wouldn't, say this to Georgie, because Georgie was fearless about other people. She was compassionate but blunt, a master psychologist with no bedside manner. She'd tell him to get over himself, take the leap, and she wouldn't be _wrong,_ but... it wasn't that easy. He needed to mentally and emotionally brace himself for failure before he could even start considering what success might look like. Love? That seemed like a tall order. Short-term romantic companionship? More likely. And he wanted that – he just couldn't be sure how it would stack up against the inevitable heartbreak.

He thought about Martin and couldn't imagine him breaking Jon's heart. Not on purpose. But it wouldn't be the first time Jon had been devastated by kindness – he had a handful of “you can do better than me”s and “I don't want to disappoint you”s in his past. Almost no one acted overtly cruel about his sexuality – they didn't hold it against him for not wanting sex, or act like he was withholding sex as a power move – but so many tended to act like his “celibacy” made him too pure to be around. Like his existence was somehow holier-than-thou. _It isn't celibacy,_ he'd wanted to yell at all of them (and had yelled at a couple). _It isn't a choice!_

Jon thought about Martin's voice, kind but sad, saying, “I just think you deserve someone who can really _understand.”_ He could hear it so clearly it hurt.

He drove the thought out of his head, reminded himself that it wasn't real and that it would likely never be real, since bringing up the streaming thing would probably explode whatever connection he had with Martin anyway. And maybe that would be for the best.

“Fine,” he finally grumbled to his knees. “I'll talk to him. But I'm not streaming tomorrow night – I want to see if anyone reacts.”

Georgie rolled her eyes and reached over to pick up the Admiral before he could start knocking scraps of Chinese food on the floor. “You do you, Sherlock,” she said. “But I promise, using your words works better.”

Jon glanced up into the shiny black button-eye of his camera and thought, _we'll see._


	6. Chapter 6

-

It was lunchtime and the administration office was empty. It was rare for Martin to be there alone, but he enjoyed it – he adored his office mates, but they were loud, even Amy at times now that she'd adjusted to having him around. Well, adjusted was a bit of an understatement. All four women had thoroughly adopted him. He didn't mind it a bit. He'd never had a working environment like this one and he hoped not to leave it anytime soon.

But he also liked the faint tick of the clock and hum of the central heating in the silence of the empty office. Even without people, there were signs of life everywhere – Nnedi's desktop collection of miniature cat figurines, Indira's sloppy mess of paperwork and empty mugs, Cassie's bright coat and scarf, Amy's kitschy paperweights.

Martin had even brought a little of himself into the space, finally. Years ago, at a school science fair, he'd paid a quid to get to use a winch contraption to break open a geode the size of a grapefruit. It had split a bit wonky but was full of gorgeous pale purple crystals, and he'd used the two halves as bookends ever since. They now sat on the side of his workspace, propping up half a dozen slim books of poetry.

Sometime in January, he felt like he'd woken up from a long, foggy dream that must have begun around when he and his mum had moved out of their old house, her into the nursing home and him into a tiny flat. Color had returned slowly to the world around him – he started actually seeing the faces of people he passed on the street, noticing the tastes and textures of everything he ate, realizing that his flat smelled musty and lighting a candle to wake up the air with vanilla and pine. His bills were all paid, with a bit left over in the account. He had real friends again. He wanted to get out of bed in the mornings.

It was amazing how long he could go without realizing he was depressed.

While cleaning his flat a bit, he'd discovered his last couple of notebooks of scribbled efforts at poems. They hadn't even gotten unpacked since he'd moved in. Reading a few scraps had made him cringe at first, but later in the day he'd found himself turning some lines over in his head, trying to rewrite them. Make them better. He hadn't written anything in months, not since well before Magnus. It felt good to play around with words again.

A knock broke the silence and his reverie. He glanced up from the vendor form he hadn't been concentrating on as the office door opened.

“Hey, sorry, it's lunch hour,” Martin began. “If you come back in a bit, someone can – oh! Hi?”

Jon edged into the room and shut the door again behind him. “Hi.”

“What's up?”

Jon cleared his throat. “Um, good, I was hoping to catch you...” He trailed off, looking at the cats on Nnedi's desk rather than at Martin.

“Jon?”

“Do you want to get lunch?” Jon asked hurriedly, looking up at Martin at last. “If you have time, or haven't eaten already. Just, at the canteen, or – or in the break room, if you brought something, it doesn't matter.”

Martin furrowed his brow. The sharp, cutting edges of his crush had mellowed into a deep, warm pulse of affection over the last few months, to the point where talking to Jon was no longer excruciatingly awkward for him. Jon, on the other hand, could still have his days of being astonishingly bad at words. Martin had learned to roll with it, to not push Jon too hard to make sense or get to a point. He always would, given enough time and calm.

“Sure,” Martin said, standing and grabbing his phone. “I only brought a peanut butter sandwich, it'll keep. Canteen?”

Jon dropped his eyes to the desks again. “Actually,” he said. “What about – there's a cafe down the block – not far, but maybe you don't have time -”

Martin picked up his coat as well and shrugged it on. “Plenty of time,” he said, grabbing his scarf and gloves. “What's up, really, Jon? Just wanting to get out of the building?”

“I -” Jon looked aside. “I'd like to talk. Not around coworkers, preferably.”

Martin's stomach clenched. For the first time, he hesitated. But he finished tugging his scarf around his neck anyway, swallowed, and made himself say, “Should I be alarmed? Planning some light arson?”

“What? No!” Jon looked up at him, affronted, and it broke the light tension that had strained the quiet of the office. He huffed, shoving his hands in his own coat pockets. “It's just, the walls have eyes, you know? I think Tim's in the canteen right now and he doesn't need to know everything I do.”

Martin laughed. “I think it's ears the walls have, traditionally,” he said, walking with Jon out the door. “Hang on, let me lock up if I'll be away for a while.” He secured the admin door – the Out to Lunch sign was already on it – and tucked his keys away. “D'you mean the cafe down Leicester way? I stop there for breakfast sometimes if I'm really early, it's nice.”

Jon's shoulders relaxed as they chatted about the cafe, and their commutes, and the weather, and dodging nosy coworkers. It was easy, warm conversation, and it lasted them all the way out of the Institute and down the street. A light dusting of snow had covered London in confectioner's sugar last night, and the city looked more postcard-perfect than usual (although the streets themselves were a mire of gray slush). Martin took a deep lungful of the frozen air, enjoying the pinch in his sinuses.

But the miasma of warmth and fresh bread inside the cafe was preferable, and Martin huffed another deep breath as soon as they stepped inside. His stomach grumbled, thankfully buried under the clinking din of forks and mugs. He couldn't say he was sorry to leave his sad, partly squished peanut butter sandwich behind in the work fridge.

They nudged their way through the crowded cafe to a small two-person table by a window. The view was mostly of gray street slush, but a couple of the windows of the building across the street were looking picturesque with their cornices all dusted in white. Martin reveled in noticing nice little things again – depression stole so much he didn't even realize was missing. He wasn't used to being trapped under the gray fog for so long. He felt like he'd missed so much.

A server came over. Martin ordered the soup of the day, Jon a sandwich, both of them a milky tea. Martin gazed a little too long at Jon's gloved fingers as he rubbed his hands together, trying to wake them up with warmth. His nose was pink from cold.

“-serious and maybe a bit awkward.”

Martin blinked. Jon had been talking. “Huh?”

Jon sighed. “I said, I wanted to talk to you about something serious -”

“Oh,” Martin said quietly, stomach sinking.

“Not, not, um -” Jon waved his hands helplessly, then tugged his gloves off and scrunched them in his fists. “Not _bad,_ or – I don't want to scare you -”

“Too late,” Martin said, picking up a spoon and twiddling it around nervously.

Jon untwisted his gloves and laid them out on the side of the table, then clasped his hands together instead. “I'm sorry, I'm trying to figure out how to say...” He trailed off.

“Any way is better than keeping me in suspense,” Martin said, trying for a light tone, probably failing.

Jon took a determined breath and said, “Last week I found out that you know I livestream video games on Twitch.”

Martin hands jerked. He dropped the spoon.

Jon looked up at him, questioning. Martin tried to say something – his mouth opened, then closed – but his throat had shut and his brain had gone totally blank.

“You do, then,” Jon said, confirmation in his tone, eyes on Martin's face. “You know that.”

Martin whispered, “I...”

Their food arrived. Martin stared at the server and then at his bowl of sweet corn chowder like he had no idea what he was seeing. He picked up the spoon again and tapped the table, put the spoon down, picked up his mug of tea in both hands, got scalded on the pads of his fingers, hissed and shifted his grip to the mug handle, and then just held the mug in front of his mouth, staring with mounting horror across the table.

“So you weren't going to say anything to me,” Jon said, looking strangely sad. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

Martin exhaled something like grief, then inhaled something like confusion. “I don't...” he said weakly. “I don't know.”

Jon looked down at his sandwich and leaned his head into one hand, fingers curled at his temple. He picked up a sandwich half but made no move to eat it. “I. Okay. I know it's a lot. It was a lot to me when I overheard Sasha and Tim. I've had time to think about it all and I'm – I think I'm all right with it, actually. You having watched the streams, I mean. I think I'm mostly perturbed that no one was ever going to bring it up – it creates an awkward power dynamic, rather, you know, at work. For people to be watching me when I don't know. But I do stream publicly, so... no one's really at fault here, is what I'm saying.” He looked up from fiddling with his sandwich. “Martin?”

Martin's hand holding the mug handle had sagged, and a drizzle of hot tea slipped over the edge and down his fingers. He hissed, stuck his tea-damp fingers in his mouth, then jerked them right back out and said, “Wait, Sasha and Tim _what?”_

Haltingly, Jon explained the conversation he'd overheard. Martin struggled to grasp what he was saying. How did Tim know Martin had...? When had Tim been spying on -

The morning in the Institute entryway came back to Martin from the mists of time. He remembered Tim looking a little too close at Martin's phone, hesitating before handing it back. “That little shit,” Martin murmured to himself, wonderingly. He took a sip of his tea.

Jon frowned at him. Martin set his tea down and explained.

In a momentary lull, both of them stuck in their own thoughts, Jon finally took a bite of his sandwich. Martin remembered his spoon, picked it up and poked at his soup for a few seconds. “It was What the Ghost,” Martin told his bowl. “Georgie gave you a little shout-out one time. I – I'd listened to her for years and I dunno, I just wished I had more of her stuff to listen to, and some stupid part of me thought, maybe she'd wander through the background sometimes since she lived there. Or I could see more of the cat.”

Jon's brow pinched, and then memory and realization clearly dawned. He slapped his hand over his face. “Georgie,” he groaned. “I completely forgot – Christ, that was so long ago. I had a spike in subscribers around then, she's got a way bigger audience than me. It never occurred to me that anyone from work would... _ugh.”_ He dragged his hand down over his face and reached for his tea.

“I mean, I got to that stuff really late,” Martin said. “Actually, the first time I found your channel was the same day we, er, met.”

Jon stared at him for a moment. Then he blinked and said, “Oh, no – not that day I snapped all over you like a – like a rabid dog?” He looked horrified.

Martin finally choked out a laugh. He stirred his soup a bit. He realized he was actually very hungry, and that the soup was rapidly getting cold. He took a bite. “Yeah,” he mumbled around it. “I almost threw my laptop when I heard your voice.” He swallowed.

“What on earth possessed you to keep watching?”

“I, er... I dunno, I liked the Jon I saw there. He was – I mean, you were – fun. You looked like a lot of fun, sounded like a friend, and I...” He trailed off. Drew the spoon through the soup again. Without looking up, he said, matter-of-fact, “I was very lonely.”

The silence dragged on for too long. Martin left his spoon in his bowl and picked up his mug again. He dared a glance up.

Jon had been staring at him, and broke his gaze as soon as Martin might meet it. Looking at Martin's left arm, Jon asked, “Are you, still?”

“Not so much,” Martin said. “Sometimes, a bit. But you're better as a real friend than a stranger on a screen, so.”

“Oh,” Jon said. After a moment, he said, “I didn't stream last Friday. Wanted to catch someone out, you or Sasha or Tim. But no one acted differently. This last week has been so bloody confusing.”

Martin shook his head and said, “Oh, I only ever watched old ones – I never even finished Bloodborne.”

Jon looked up sharply. “Wait, Bloodb – I finished that months ago. Before you started at the Institute, I think.”

“Probably.” Martin went back to his soup, head down. “The story was pretty interesting, but I could never play something that hard myself. I liked watching you do it.” He grimaced. “That sounds so weird when I say it.”

Jon shook his head. “No, no, that's... I'm fine with that. Really. I wouldn't stream if I minded – but seriously, you haven't watched anything more recent than – I don't know, last summer?”

Martin shrugged a negative, shaking his head.

“Oh.” Jon looked at his plate. “Well. I guess that explains some things.”

Martin frowned at Jon, questioning.

“I thought you'd heard me talking about you,” Jon said. “Georgie says my crush was pretty obvious, so I didn't understand why you'd never reacted.”

Martin choked.

Jon reached across the table and patted his hand, looking concerned, while Martin coughed until tears welled up. He finally managed a sip of tea and a quick scrub over his eyes with his sleeve, before he could rasp out, “I'm sorry?”

“Erm,” Jon said uselessly. Martin stared at him. There was a deep bloom of color in his cheeks.

“No you don't,” Martin said stupidly.

“What?”

“Crush. Me? No. That's -”

Jon's cheeks flushed even deeper. “I mean,” he said, “I said this would be awkward.”  
Martin opened his mouth, closed it. Said, “I'm basically _in love_ with you,” like an idiot. Buried his face in his hands in terminal mortification.

From outside his shell, Jon's voice exclaimed, “Oh!” Fingers brushed over the back of one of Martin's hands, then pried it away from his face and pulled it down to clasp with Jon's on the tabletop. Martin stared at their fingers wrapped around each other. “Martin,” said Jon, “would you like to go on a date sometime?”

Martin looked up at Jon and stared at him like he was mad. “Yes?” he said. “I think I'm an idiot,” he added.

Jon began to smile. “Who isn't?” he said.

With an abrupt flash of panic, Martin asked, “Wait, is _this_ a date?”

Jon's smile got even wider, but he said, “No – no, I think everyone has to go into it on the same page for it to count, right?”

Martin gaped at him. “Jon Sims, you _menace,”_ he said. “Did you – no, this doesn't count!”

Jon let go of his hand and bent his head to laugh quietly at the table. “I swear I wasn't trying to trick you, or thought of it like – I never meant this to be date-like, I'm sorry.”

“Let's get lunch, he says,” Martin said, aghast. “That little cafe is nice, he says. You're trying to kill me.”

“We could come back, for the real date?” Jon suggested, looking up.

“No!” Martin said, stabbing his spoon into his soup again. “I'll never look at a cozy cafe again without wanting to die of embarrassment.”

Jon snickered and took a big bite of sandwich. “Sorry I ruined cafes,” he said, mouth full. “What about cinemas? Could go see a film.”

“I can't believe I like you,” Martin said. “Yes, I would absolutely like to go to the movies with you. Sod.”

Jon beamed at him.

-

Tim swung his head into the open door of Sasha's office. “Hey, Sash,” he stage-whispered. “Guess who just came back from lunch?”

“Um, both of us, literally just now, Tim. Have you hit your head?”

Tim dodged into the office, waving his hands dismissively. “No no no no, I had to go to the loo,” he said.

“Good to know.”

“And then I went up to chat with Rosie a minute, up front.”

“I know where Rosie is...”

“And _guess._ Who were coming back from lunch? A together lunch. Mm? An oops-we-have-to-stop-holding-hands-before-we-get-back-to-work lunch.”

Sasha looked up from her desk at Tim's shining smile. She struggled to keep a straight face and said, “Oh, don't act so smug about it,” she said, “you didn't do anything to help. You're the worst matchmaker.”

Tim flopped into her extra chair. “I'm wounded,” he said, clapping his hand over his heart. “You wound me.”

Sasha lost the fight with her grin. “You're not bullshitting me, are you? You mean our Jon, right?”

“Oh my God, you country gran,” Tim said gleefully. _“Our_ Jon was holding hands with a boy, yes, Sash. Maybe they'll go to prom together!”

“Shut up,” she laughed. “Ah, good for them.”

“And hey,” Tim said, leaning forward in the chair. “I think I'm an okay matchmaker.”

Sasha wrangled a stern look back onto her face and peered at Tim over her glasses. “I hope you're not suggesting anything inappropriate for the workplace, Mr. Stoker.”

Tim shivered with delight. “God, that's going to be so hot when Gertrude retires and you're my boss.”

Sasha dropped her stern look and pouted. “What do you mean it's not hot _now?”_

Tim stood and leaned over her desk, gangly elbows barely avoiding her paperwork. He said, “I'm sorry,” and kissed her quickly; “you're always,” kiss, “entirely too hot,” kiss, “for an office environment,” a final long, proper kiss.

She broke it after a few seconds and glanced at the door, which Tim had never closed. “Scoundrel,” she murmured fondly.

“I'm coming to yours after work, right?”

“Mm hm.”

“How long is there left in the work day? Are you feeling suddenly ill? I might be feeling very poorly all of a sudden.”

Sasha patted Tim's cheek and pushed him away by the shoulder. “Unfortunately, you are the picture of health,” she told him. “And so am I. Go spy on Jon so you can tell me later about how goofy he looks right now, I know he must.”

Tim snapped off a salute and left the office, grinning. Sasha watched him go, enjoying the view, certain she looked just as goofy as anyone fool enough to fall in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came out less angsty and/or contentious than I had originally imagined, lol.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue! A selection of scenes over the next several months. I swear I tried to make there be more conflict/tension but really I just want to exist in this world where everyone is kind and nothing hurts. I am but a simple touch-starved ace in quarantine with simple wants, wistful sigh.

-

“That's it?”

Martin looked over the streaming setup in the living room, hands in his pockets. Jon shrugged. “I don't necessarily want a high-res view of my face,” he said. “I'd rather spend my money on a good microphone and capture card.”

“And new consoles,” Martin added, looking at the heap of devices.

“None of them are new,” Jon said, waving a hand at them. “I'll never be at the cutting edge of games journalism, or whatnot.”

Martin laughed and wandered further into the flat. “Considering I just play whatever will run on my dinosaur of a laptop, forgive me if I'm a bit impressed.”

“I wouldn't mind a decent PC rig,” Jon muttered, heading into the kitchen. “But that's another whole kettle of fish... want a cup of tea?”

“Sure,” Martin said, shedding his coat and hanging it by the door before following Jon. Jon poked around in the cabinets for a moment. Shrewdly, Martin asked, “Want me to make _you_ a cup of tea?”

Jon looked at him with obvious puppy eyes.

Martin huffed and took the tin of tea bags out of Jon's hands, but he couldn't help his grin. Jon said, “I don't know why, it's just better when you make it.”

“I've said,” Martin said patiently, flicking on the kettle, “it's all just temperatures and timing, Jon.”

“But you can't give me numbers!”

Martin made a 'so sue me' face. “The temperature is 'mostly hot' and the timing is 'a little while,' it's not that hard.” Jon shoved his arm while Martin laughed. “I don't know, honestly, it's instinct! You get impatient, that's all.”

“I am the most patient person,” Jon said petulantly.

“And not at all competitive,” Martin said agreeably.

Their fond bickering carried them all the way through Jon cooking an uncomplicated pasta dinner, at the first bite of which Martin declared all forgiven. As the sun began to set, Georgie emerged from her studio room, rubbing her eyes and sniffing the arrabiata-scented air. Martin jumped, startled at the sight of her. Jon had told him she'd be in, since she worked from home, but Martin had forgotten.

Jon laughed at him for jumping. “You're ridiculous,” he told Martin. He was reclined on the sofa, hands clasped over his stomach.

“I still can't believe you live with _Georgie Barker,”_ Martin said, relaxing back into the cushions.

“Hey, I'm internet famous, too!” Jon objected.

Georgie had vanished into the kitchen and now returned with a bowl of pasta. Around a mouthful, she said, “Yeah, he's got a whole hundred followers.”

“Excuse you,” Jon said, glaring at her over the back of the sofa, “I may break a thousand subscribers soon.”

Martin managed to hold a serious face long enough to say, “But Jon, she's got a _podcast.”_

“Awww,” Georgie said, reaching out to ruffle Jon's hair. He slapped at her hand. “Hi, Martin! You staying for the stream? Are you streaming tonight, Jon?”

“Yeah,” said Martin. “I'm here for moral support.”

“I said I don't have to,” Jon told him, his brow beginning to furrow. “This is a terrible date -”

Martin jostled him and said, “Sharing hobbies isn't a terrible date,” he said. “I just want to spend a nice, cozy evening in with my boyfriend and his almost-a-thousand anonymous hecklers, is that so weird?”

Jon huffed a laugh but didn't argue any further. Georgie perched on the arm of the couch and chatted with Martin over her food while Jon hauled out his computer and started setting up to stream. The Admiral wandered in and tried to walk across Jon's keyboard, _prrt_ ing inquisitively, so Martin leaned over to pick him up. “Ooh, a celebrity,” Martin said, scritching the Admiral under the chin. The cat tolerated Martin's lap for half a minute, then began climbing his chest instead, sniffing around his chin to get acquainted. “Oof,” Martin said. “Ack. Cat hair, mouth.”

“You asked for it,” said Jon.

“Be warned, he'll sneeze on you,” Georgie said. “You can give him some treats if you want.”

“Ooh, please!”

Jon settled into his usual streaming spot, feet curled up to his side. He posted in his Discord, fired up _Witcher III,_ and let viewers trickle into the chat and say hi for a while. Georgie retreated back to her editing after thanking Jon for dinner. It was full dark outside by the time Jon adjusted his headset and started talking. Martin half-listened to the technical stuff about volume and lag, mostly trying to convince the Admiral that he didn't have any treats left, and that his fingertips were not for eating.

“-an arm? Oh, yes, well – special guest this week, chat, obviously I'm not alone. I've, erm, I actually have a boyfriend. Yes. Oh, thanks.” Jon's eyes flew over the chat window as he read. “Couple of months. Well, I don't have to tell you everything, do I? 'Is it the guy from work?' Er... yeah, yeah it is. What's his name? I never said.” Jon glanced across at Martin, eyebrows raised. “Are you all right with being named, or shall I give you a fun nickname? For anonymity?”

Martin grimaced. “No, I'm fine being Martin.”

“Martin,” Jon told his headset. “He doesn't want to be on camera, chat. No, we talked about it already. Chat, be nice! Martin is lovely.” Jon smirked, reading. “No, I'm not saying what he looks like, he's mine. Arm... arm, arm, show arm, send arms.” Jon sighed and rolled his eyes. “Martin, they've become instantly attached to your arm.”

Martin laughed and waved above Jon's shoulder, just into the frame of the picture. “Hi, chat!” he said, feeling silly.

“Martin arm,” Jon muttered, watching the screen. “'Marm... Jon loves Marm...' Chat, you can't do this to me. Why are you like this? You people are insufferable.”

“Don't be mean to chat,” Martin said, finding his footing in the banter. “I have a very nice Marm.”

“Oh dear lord, they can hear you through my mic,” Jon said, groaning.

Martin stuck his arm across Jon's chest. “My jumper has stars,” he told Jon's headset. It was indeed a dark blue jumper dotted with canary-yellow stars.

“'Replace Jon with Marm,'” Jon read, deadpan. “'Space Marm.' 'Thing from Addams Family but Marm.' Right, this is madness, I need to kill something. Where were we? Outskirts of Toussaint, I believe...”

-

“So Martin stopped me in the break room today and said I should watch Jon's stream tonight,” Tim said.

Sasha nearly spat out her mouthful of drink onto the bartop.

“Yeah, that's about what I said,” Tim said, patting her on the back. “But with coffee.”

Sasha coughed until she could speak. “Oh, God,” she said. “How long have we been busted?”

“No idea,” Tim said mournfully. “We had all the ammunition in the world and the element of surprise, Sash, and we still failed to get one over on anyone.”

Their food orders arrived at the bar. Sasha took another sip of her drink and stole one of Tim's chips. “What's this 'we'?” she asked. “You never came up with any plan.”

Tim smacked her hand away from more of his chips. “Everything I might do felt too mean,” he said.

“Awww,” said Sasha. “Bless your cotton socks.”

“I'm going to take back every nice thing I said about you...”

“Just try!”

They ate and laughed and eventually made their way back to Sasha's. Later in the evening, with the telly on some action movie neither of them were paying attention to, Sasha moved her kisses down the column of Tim's throat and he tipped his head back against the couch cushions.

His throat vibrated under her lips as he said, “Tell me you're hideously curious too, Sash.”

“What?”

“About Jon's stream. Should be on now.”

She bonked her forehead into his shoulder and laughed. “Oh, fine,” she said, “if taking a look will get it off your mind.”

Tim snorted and wriggled beneath her, digging his phone out of his pocket. She refused to help by moving from her spot on his lap, and he grumbled at her, and she snickered at him. It was delightful. Finally he got the phone up and navigated to Twitch.

Sasha didn't want to say it, but she _was_ hideously curious. Tim held the phone up so they could both see it while the stream buffered.

“-lots of ways to cheese the difficulty of this game,” said Jon. “I never take the Gourmet perk because it functionally means you never have to be strategic with health items. But I do rather enjoy the ekhidna decoction and exploding Quen combo strategy -”

Another voice said something faintly off screen.

“Gourmet? - It makes you regenerate health from food for twenty minutes instead of ten seconds.” Jon listened to the other person talking. “Oh, no, it doesn't let you cook new things. Well, Toussaint has a lot of different food! See -” He opened his inventory and started scrolling through a cornucopia of French cuisine. “There's no reason I had it set to a stack of bread, no, that was just what it landed on. Sure, I'll set it to... tarte tatin, I've got five of those.” Jon looked to the side, listening, then grinned again. “Chat, can you hear him? Martin says he's got a vicious craving for cassoulet now.”

An unmistakable hand came into the shot from the side, gesticulating while the tinny distant echo of Martin's voice said something about recipes.

Tim nearly fumbled the phone. Sasha put her hand over her enormous grin and squeaked with delight.

“Got to be kidding me,” Tim said.

On the stream, Jon, looking to the side with a soft expression, said, “I didn't know I was dating a chef. When are you going to cook for me?”

Tim groaned and flopped his head back against the sofa. “Got to be kidding me!”

“We're the best, most useless matchmakers in the world,” Sasha said gleefully.

“Absolutely useless, both of us!” Tim clicked his phone off and wrapped his arms around Sasha's shoulders.

She leaned in and kissed him soundly. “Maybe we just lead by example,” she said.

“Oh ho,” Tim said, smiling against her mouth. “It's an arms race now, we've got to keep ahead of them. To be a good example, and all.”

Sasha kissed him again and said, “Better hurry up, then.”

-

Springtime arrived reluctantly, the cold remaining punishing even while green tried to peek out on every tree. On a sunny, gusty Saturday afternoon in April, during what was meant to be a nice walk in Hyde Park with his boyfriend, Jon found himself wishing he'd brought a scarf. And gloves. And a heavier coat. And that he hadn't left home, mostly.

“Oof, the bloody wind,” Martin complained the third time a gust tried to tear his knit hat off his head. He tugged it back down over his ears and hunched up in his coat. “Turn back?”

Jon laughed with relief. “Absolutely,” he said. “It looked so nice out from the window.”

“Let's go back to the window and pretend, then,” Martin said.

“An effort was made,” said Jon. He turned and was immediately smacked by an icy gust. He flinched back, instinctively leaning towards Martin.

Martin's arm caught him round the shoulders and tugged him close. Jon let it happen, leaning into Martin's warm bulk. “Here,” Martin said, pulling Jon around and even closer, so that they were stood face to face, “warm up a minute. Why didn't you put gloves on?”

“It's sunny!” Jon complained. Martin was wearing a hoodie with the sort of pocket that extended across the whole front; he took Jon's hands and pulled them inside, then quickly tugged his gloves off and tucked his hands in around Jon's. His hands and the pocket interior were both toasty-warm. Jon hummed appreciatively, leaning his whole weight against Martin's front, and Martin laughed gently at him, stretching up to put his chin on Jon's head. Jon hunched to make it easier. Surely it was a hunch, and not a full-on cuddle. Surely.

They were close enough to the Peter Pan statue to see it around a bend in the path. A trio of teens walked up to it, chattering loudly, and started doing silly poses with it and taking pictures. Jon let his eyelids slide half-closed, watching kids having fun on a cold, sunny day, huddling his frozen fingers inside the cupped heat of Martin's palms. He ached under the skin with something deeper than the cold. He knew they'd go back to the flat in a minute, sit at the window with hot tea and talk and laugh and keep edging closer every minute to a point of no return. A point beyond which losing any part of what was growing between them would rip something vital out of Jon, something that wouldn't ever really heal.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Jon told Martin's shoulder. Tension clenched his guts.

“Hm?”

“I don't want to sound dire... it isn't that serious, I just...”

“It's all right, whatever you need to tell me. It's fine.”

Jon huffed out a sharp breath against Martin's hoodie and withdrew his hands from the pocket. He jammed them back into his own pockets, willing the heat to transfer, but of course it didn't stay long. Martin frowned at him and held out his gloves. Jon shook his head, smiled, and said, trying not to sound strained, “Head home?”

“Sure.” Martin tugged his gloves back on. The teens had left the Peter Pan statue and were walking their direction, which Jon took as a convenient excuse to not talk. He sped up a bit on the path, eager to get out of the cold as much as anything.

Martin didn't push him as they walked back past the fountains and the gate and the Tube stop, into the maze of streets that eventually took them to Jon's building. Martin grumbled mild complaint when Jon opened the door to the stairwell instead of pressing the elevator button, but he made no effort to take the lift instead, considering it had stuck him between floors more than once. The second time it had happened, Martin had declared the lift to be fat-phobic and that he didn't need that kind of body negativity in his life, and Jon had laughed while extolling all the positives he could think of about Martin's body. Martin had gone red as a beet and had clearly been confused-but-pleased to no end by the praise.

Georgie was out at Melanie's and wouldn't be back until at least the next evening. Jon hunched his shoulders as he unlocked the flat door and let himself and Martin in. That was probably why the dreaded subject was on his mind – because he knew what Georgie and Melanie would be up to, at least some of the time; and he knew the option was wide open for Martin to stay over tonight, although neither of them had mentioned such a thing. Yet.

Martin headed directly for the kitchen and said, “I'll make tea, go warm up at the radiator, yeah?”

“Okay,” Jon said quietly. He drifted towards the radiator, standing where he was able to see a sliver of the kitchen interior. He watched Martin move around inside, listened to the running tap as Martin filled the kettle. He closed his eyes and clenched his hands over the heat, as if he could grab some and hold onto it. A small muscle spasmed in his hand that had been nerve-damaged so many years ago. He rubbed his other thumb into the spot, thinking in spirals.

He didn't realize minutes had passed until Martin nudged his shoulder. Jon blinked up at him. Smiling, Martin held out a mug – the one Jon liked best because its handle fit his fingers just right. Jon had never said as much, but Martin noticed things like that, even when he didn't realize it consciously.

God, Jon didn't want to lose this.

“What did you want to talk about?” Martin asked. Jon could tell he was keeping his tone carefully neutral. His expression looked relaxed at a glance, but Jon had been studying his face for enough time now to see the tension of fear around his eyes.

“Sit down?” Jon said, tugging Martin's sleeve towards the sofa. Martin followed and sat uncertainly at one end; Jon hesitated, then sat at the other end. The distance was not far, but it was palpable. Jon sipped his tea, and then all in a rush, to rip the plaster off, he said, “I have a weird relationship with – with, erm, bodies, and with sex, and it's very likely that I will never want to have sex with you, but I want to make it exceedingly clear that there's nothing wrong with _you,_ and I felt like it was important to go ahead and have this discussion as soon as possible so that – so no one wastes any, I mean that's not the right word, but, no one – is, is stuck with any – regrets, I suppose -”

Martin gave a soft noise of protest that stopped Jon in his tracks, and leaned forward to put his mug on the coffee table. “Slow down,” he told Jon. “Back up a bit, because you've just said about eight things that need unpacking.”

Jon frowned at him.

Martin took a deep breath and let it out, studying his hands while he searched for the right response. “You're – you're coming out to me as asexual, right? More or less?”

Jon swallowed. “I don't usually lead with the word,” he said. “Then I spend so much time answering questions that sometimes the actual, the um, salient details don't get covered. Like, me not having – not wanting to – and what that means.”

Martin chewed his bottom lip. “Okay. I can't say I'm an expert on asexuality, or how it all works, but I do know it's real, so, you know, right off the bat, let me say I believe you.”

After a moment, Jon said, “All right. Better than some.”

“I'm not trying to score points, here.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“No, don't... apologize, I just... hm.” Martin sat back. “I had wondered before, actually. You know the office gossip is just a _mess_ at the Institute, right?” He flashed Jon a rueful grin.

Jon quirked a smile back and shook his head. “Right. Stands to reason, what with me being the resident, I don't know... ice-lord, aloof prick.”

“Hey,” said Martin. “You are my very favorite aloof prick. And you're only icy because you refuse to wear gloves out in winter.”

“It is technically spring,” Jon muttered.

Martin rolled his eyes. “You would argue with a brick wall,” he said fondly. “And all I mean is – I went into this relationship with open eyes and no expectations, all right? I don't feel like you owe me anything – and besides, no one should ever make you feel like you owe them – that!”

“They don't,” Jon said, which wasn't entirely true of his prior relationships. “You don't,” he said more firmly.

“Good. And then – the way you said, nothing's wrong with me, like actually something's wrong with you? It _isn't._ It absolutely isn't, Jon, okay?”

Jon tightened his hands around his mug and didn't say anything.

Martin turned to face him on the sofa and stared him down. “Jon, there isn't anything wrong with you.”

Jon shrugged one shoulder. “I know,” he told the middle distance. “I do know, really. I've had plenty of time and chances to do the whole... identity struggle. I've tried to want sex. It's pointless, it's like... trying really hard to see red, when you're colorblind. Trying harder isn't going to do anything. But, I -” He let out a sharp breath and clutched his mug. “I hate that it – it makes people feel unwanted. It makes people I'm with feel like they're not good enough for me, and that bothers me more than...”

Martin interrupted, shaking his head. “It doesn't,” he said. “I don't feel unwanted, Jon. Listen...” He trailed off for a long moment. Reached over and picked up his tea again, blew on it, sipped. “I am... I am used to feeling unwanted. I'm used to feeling – like a disappointment, and not good enough, and especially... undesirable.” He plucked at the jumper over his stomach. Jon made a noise of protest, trying to interrupt, but Martin stopped him with a gesture. “You have _never_ made me feel that way, and I've never for a second felt disappointed by you, either. Okay?”

Jon took a long drink of tea. He believed Martin – his mind fully believed – he just wanted desperately to be able to feel the belief viscerally, to trust with his whole being. But believing with just his mind was a pretty good start.

“If... going forward, if you want to see other people as well,” Jon said, “I'm fine with that.”

Martin blinked and frowned at Jon. “Wow, that was a sudden leap.”

Jon looked resolutely at the mug in his hands. “I just mean that – it's been suggested, and I didn't think it was a stupid suggestion. For a partner of mine to have other partners too, I mean. For, uh. Fulfillment.”

Martin set his tea mug back down on the coffee table a little too hard. Jon stared at him. For the first time, he looked verging on angry.

“Okay, I am -” Martin took a deep breath through his nose and blew it out, visibly relaxing his shoulders. “I am a new and different person from anyone you've dated before,” he said. “All right? So I – I don't speak for all, you know, sex-having people, or whatever we're called, but – and okay, I guess that's not the stupidest thing for someone to say if they're poly, maybe, but – I, ugh, I'm not processing well, give me a moment.”

“Allosexual,” Jon muttered. “Of course there are ace people who have sex and I don't want to give the impression that I speak for all of us eith-”

Martin waved his hand and Jon stopped. _“Are_ you polyamorous?” Martin asked.

Jon hummed, thinking. “No, I don't suppose so. I don't feel romantic very often, certainly not often enough for it to happen with two people at once.”

“I am also not,” Martin said. “In my experience. So. Can we go ahead and agree that while we're dating, it's just us?”

A tension Jon didn't realize had settled in his stomach unraveled. He breathed a little easier and said, “Yes. I'd... I'd like that.” He hesitated, then added, “It just makes me feel selfish, I suppose. To want to keep you to myself, knowing I won't be able to give you everything you need.”

Martin's rolled his eyes so hard his head nearly tilted back. “Oh my God, I don't _need_ sex, Jon,” he said. “I'm not going to keel over after a while if I don't get any – any _ass.”_ He blushed but powered through the declaration, and the abruptness of it made Jon bark a laugh. Martin's mouth twitched into a grin and he added, “I won't die of critical vitamin D deficiency -”

Laughing harder, Jon almost spilled his tea. He gulped more of it and set the mug down, out of danger.

“Can I sit next to you, instead of in the serious-talk-zone?” Martin asked.

Jon beat him to the punch, shifting immediately across the middle seat of the sofa and leaning into Martin's side. Martin wrapped his arms around Jon's shoulders and hugged him sideways, squashing him against soft wool-clad bulk. “I don't like that you don't like your body,” Jon told his jumper, muffled. He nudged his head further into the crook between Martin's neck and chin, breathing deep of the smell of his laundry soap. “It's a very nice body and it belongs to someone I care about deeply, and anyone being mean to it makes me sad,” Jon mumbled.

“See, that right there is why you don't have to want me sexually for me to feel wanted,” Martin murmured back, digging the heel of his hand into the top of Jon's back.

Jon smiled faintly. “All right. Compliments are something I can deliver on, no trouble.”

“What brought all this on, anyway?” Martin asked.

Jon hmmed. “Um, Georgie will be gone and... I, ah, I was considering... asking if you wanted to stay the night.”

Martin was quiet for a moment. Jon resisted the urge to twist his head to look up at his expression. But it was with delighted amusement that Martin then said, “Are you trying to get me into your bed, Mr. Sims? You _cur.”_

Jon grinned, stupidly pleased. “It's very cold,” he said primly. “I thought a proper gentleman like yourself would want to keep me warm.”

“Oh my God, Jon, I am going to cuddle you _to death.”_

“Well, preferably not,” Jon complained.

“I want to sleep with you so badly, Jon Sims.”

“Martin...”

“There is going to be such filthy spooning action later tonight.”

Laughing, Jon said, “Martin!”

“Hot cocoa and an even hotter bed-warmer...”

Jon gave up, and went breathless laughing while Martin teased.

-

“This is fine. This is fine, right? I mean, you don't have to go. I only told her I met someone at work, she's not expecting to meet you or anything. She doesn't expect anything really – it's good, right, not having expectations to, erm, live up to or let down? Or -”

Jon caught Martin's hands and drew them away from the tie he was attempting to knot. “Shh,” he said. “Martin. I'm going with you, calm down.”

Martin blew out a quick breath. “You don't have to -”

“I may actually get cross if you tell me I don't have to go again,” Jon said. “I know I don't have to. That's somewhat the point. I want to, and I'm going to.”

“Oh.”

Jon held his hands over his chest. “We will take your mother out to a nice dinner for her birthday,” he told Martin gently, “and it will be fine.”

Martin inhaled shakily. “There's no reason to assume she's going to be mean,” he said. “I mean, she has good days. And a lot of bad days. I'm just afraid she'll be cruel to you, and...”

“And I'm an adult who can either take a hit or stand up for myself, as needed,” Jon said, rubbing his thumbs over Martin's knuckles. “More importantly, I intend to stand up for you.”

Martin blanched. “Oh God, Jon, don't lecture my mum about parenting.” He gave a nervous, too-high laugh.

Jon smiled at him. “I'm not going to lecture anyone,” he said. “I'm just not going to let her get away with any more of what she's put you through.”

Quietly, Martin said, “She's not that bad.”

Jon pursed his lips. “We'll see,” he said. “Like you say, maybe she's having a good day. Either way, you won't be alone, and we'll leave right after and come home, and I'll still be here. All right?”

“All right.”

Jon leaned in and kissed the corner of Martin's mouth, then his cheek, then slid Martin all the way into a tight hug. Martin held him back, probably too hard. “Now,” Jon said, pulling away, “I, uh, actually am terrible at tying ties backwards, but if you need help I can try -”

Martin laughed weakly and pushed Jon away from between himself and the bathroom mirror. “I've got it, just give me a minute.”

Jon smiled again, lingered for a moment, then left. Martin took a deep, steadying breath, undid his work and re-tied the tie, then tucked the end under his sweater vest and double-checked himself. He looked all right – tame, presentable. He turned his head slightly to the side and watched the fluorescent light flash off of the small gold placeholder stud in his ear, which was still healing. He knew for certain that his mum would notice it and say something, but for some reason that made him smile. He wasn't looking forward to her usual jabs at his weight and health and job and orientation, but piercing his ear? The anticipation of her disapproval was almost eager.

He laughed at himself, feeling stupid for enjoying a little rebellion he could have just indulged in as a teen, like everyone else. When he'd mentioned to Jon that he thought piercings were cool but he could never pull them off, Jon had been aghast. He'd demanded to know who had told Martin such a blatant lie. What began as a light, joking conversation had devolved into discussion of Martin's mother, and... well.

Martin tugged his vest straight for the umpteenth time, tried to flatten the ginger curl above his ear that had never been flat in his entire life, gave up, and left the bathroom. Jon leaned by the front door, absorbed in his phone. He looked up when Martin walked in and gave him a warm smile. He oozed respectable academia in his green jumper and tweed jacket. His hair was up in a neat bun, although Martin knew from months of experience that Jon's hair couldn't stay neat for more than an hour, so it would probably be a flyaway mess by the time they got out of London, much less to the restaurant.

“You clean up all right,” Jon told him, and Martin laughed. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” said Martin, taking Jon's elbow when he stuck it out.

Walking out into the summer sunshine of early afternoon, Jon's hand in his, Martin dared to entertain the idea that maybe, just letting himself be happy wouldn't be the end of the world.

-

The first time Martin showed his face on camera, it was an accident. Having been on the other side of the streaming equation for so long, he hadn't believed Jon at first about how easy it was to forget that hundreds of people were looking at you. No, Martin had thought; he'd never be able to get over the mortifying ordeal of being known.

Then he'd leaned into the shot while talking to Jon, to grab the packet of M&Ms that Jon had stolen from him earlier. Only after sitting back into his spot and looking at the chat window had he realized what he'd done.

_“MARM??” “MARM FACE REVEAL” “martin face. mace?” “mace!!” “MACE” “we stan”_

Jon nearly died laughing and after a while of halfhearted complaining, Martin leaned sheepishly back into the camera's view and waved. Chat blew up again. Skimming through it, Martin could never have anticipated how affirming it would feel. He was glad he was out of shot again, because he could feel himself threatening to choke up a bit as chat instantly clipped, giffed, and memed his little wave.

“They want you to replace me,” Jon complained, turning to lean against Martin's arm and put his feet up on the sofa. “Chat, chat, back on topic, I have a vampire to kill. No – no, listen, I know it's bury your gays to kill Dettlaff, I hate that it'll break Regis's heart, but we have to finish the Death March genocide run. We do! I killed the doppler and all the trolls, I'm already a war criminal, it doesn't get worse. Let me just meditate real quick...”

Martin let his hand creep into the shot as he ran his fingers through Jon's hair. Jon's fingers flew at almost superhuman speed, he devolved into shouting curses and squirming against Martin's side, and Martin watched the chat window and couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this appreciated.

The next time Martin showed his face on camera, it was on purpose.

“Bit of an unusual one this week, as promised,” Jon said into his headset. “I haven't decided what I'll be playing next – vote in the straw poll, please, that'll narrow it down – but for this sort of in-between palate cleanser, I've got some guests joining me. Helen, EscherThot, you might know if you've been here for a long time – we did some co-op puzzle games a few months ago.”

In Martin's headset, he heard a lilting, “Hello, my lovelies!”

Jon continued, “And I've got friend of the stream Amy, she doesn't do video stuff but she does some excellent leftist Twitter rants. At pateltothemetal, right?”

“Yep,” Amy said in Martin's ear.

“And of course the villain himself, Martin,” Jon said, elbowing Martin in the side. With a little digital trickery and new placement of the camera, the shot in the bottom of the stream now showed both of them sitting on the sofa next to each other. “Who suggested torturing me with Minecraft for breaking a thousand subs.”

“It's not torture,” Martin objected. On the big screen in front of them, Helen's blindingly neon avatar ran around Jon in tight spirals, while Amy was already off chasing a pig in the near distance.

“I swore when I started this channel I would never do Minecraft content, but here I am,” Jon said, long-suffering.

“Oh come on,” Martin said, grinning. “It'll be fun. You can fight all the mobs, yeah? We're going to need a spider farm as soon as possible for the idea we had.”

“You did _not_ just say the words 'spider farm' to me,” Jon said.

Over the mics, Helen asked, “We have a plan?”

“Amy thought of it, actually,” Martin said.

“I thought we could try to build the British Bake Off tent,” Amy said, laughing. “Look, we spawned in a good spot for it, there's a big field over here!”

Martin ran for a tree and started punching. “Come on, Jon, get digging!” he ordered.

Jon groaned and rolled his eyes, but Martin didn't miss the smile at the corners of his mouth as he listened to his friends banter and make grand plans. And a couple of hours later, neck deep in zombies in the middle of a mine, struggling to make progress and clearly having a blast, Jon finally said, grudgingly, “Chat... I may have misjudged.”

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Ekhidna decoction + Tawny Owl + exploding Quen = by far my favorite way to murder my way through Witcher III. Also I am physically incapable of killing any of the trolls. They are precious.)
> 
> I have a couple of other time stamps that didn't fit well in the structure of this chapter, so I may add a second story at some point with more random bits and bobs of AU fluff.


End file.
